Paper Dolls
by onebyone
Summary: When Grace Barnes signs up to become a combat nurse she has no idea what will by asked of her. From D-Day to the end of the war the story of Grace and her fellow nurses runs in parallel with our favourite BOB characters and has its fair share of drama.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Nothing is mine accept the OCs. This is based on the mini-series not the real men. I don't mean to offend anyone. I'll try to be as historically accurate as I can but sometimes history just gets in the way of a good story ******

February 1944

'_Don't cry baby, Don't sigh baby, bye, bye, baby do-dah, do-day, When I come back we'll live the life of ease…'_

The instrumental kicked in and Grace was off, spinning and kicking her bare feet over the concrete floor. She whirled like a dervish until she was dizzy and staggering and gasping for breath between bursts of laughter.

'All right, all right, Ginger Rogers. Very impressive. Will you come a do up my dress now?'

Grace twirled across the crowded space of the Nissan hut, still swaying to the music crackling out of the ancient wireless set and obliged her friend, Maggie who was pressing her face up as close as it would get to the smeared mirror. This one tiny mirror was to be shared between all 12 girls who lived in Hut 8b, Tennis Court 1, Peebles, Scotland. During their time spent there an uneasy sort of rota had formed dictating who would use the mirror and when. On an average day all you needed was a quick glance to check things weren't wildly out of place, after all they were nurses, or training nurses at least, appearance wasn't their number one priority. Tonight, however was different. Tonight was the dance they had all be waiting for, the dance which would celebrate the completion of the combat training and their release from the prison that had been the Peebles military training facility. The mirror was the most important object in the room.

Grace zipped up the back of Maggie's bright red dress as she fixed her makeup. 'No more 5 am starts,' said Grace.

'No more uniforms,' Maggie replied, grinning in spite of herself.

'No more 6 mile hikes.'

'I quite enjoyed those hikes,' said Dorothea Johnson, leaning over Maggie's shoulder to pull the rollers from copper coloured hair and arrange the resulting curls around her pretty round face. 'You should see my legs, ever so shapely.'

'Trust you to go and look for the best in things,' drawled Maggie sarcastically. She was known for her ill-temper and sour attitude but even she couldn't muster any real venom tonight, not when the mood was so festive. 'Don't tell me you're going to miss Matron.'

'You call that a suture, Harris!' Grace imitated Matron's stern bark, so easily parodied everyone had their own version.

'You better buck up your act, Barnes!'

Dorothea continued grinning. 'You're all talking like this is the end. We'll be back again in a few weeks once our leave is done with.'

'Stop trying to bring us down,' said Grace, now searching under the folding metal camp beds. 'Who the hell has got my bloody left shoe?'

'Well, this certainly isn't mine!' called Mary from the other side of the room. 'It's so tiny I can barely fit my hand in it let alone my foot.' The offending article came soaring over the heads of the other girls.

An hour later the girls of 8b were ready and joining the 70 or so nurses, doctors and pharmacists of the British 6th Hospital down the icy path towards the town. Over them loomed the red-roofed gothic building of Peebles Hydro which had been their home for the past 6 months of training. Before the war it had been a spa resort, the playground of the rich but in recent years playgrounds of any sort and especially those of the wealthy were frowned upon and the building had been requisitioned by the MOD. Now the beauty of the fabulous hotel had been marred somewhat by the fleet of Nissan huts lined up on the tennis courts. Grace looked up at the grand building fondly and realised that, despite all the hardship she had really grown to love this place. The wide green moors melting into the blue mountains of the Scottish highlands which, ironically were at their most beautiful at 5am reveille, the smell of food cooking, better than anything they'd get at home with their ration books, in the hotel itself which they were only allowed to enter for meals and lectures, and most of all the people. Grace loved the feeling of camaraderie she had found in the army and while there had been points during the training when it had all seemed a big mistake, she knew now that she had made the right decision in going into combat nursing.

'Do you need a hand there, Grace? It's a bit slippy.'

It was Simon, suddenly appearing to the left of her. He was a pharmacist with whom for the past few weeks she had been exchanging shy glances and little flirtatious comments. He was a handsome Liverpudlian, tall with scruffy blonde hair and an adorable accent. Grace stifled a giggle as she received an encouraging smile from Dorothea.

'Would you catch me if I fell?' she asked coyly, flicking her dark hair from her eyes.

He grinned back. 'Maybe if I held onto your waist as we walked…'

She let out a mock gasp. 'How very forward of you, Sergeant.' And she darted down the hill to catch up with the other girls who promptly burst into peels of laughter.

After a short walk they arrived at the Officer's Club where the dance was to be held. It was to be a mixed rank dance. The nurse started with the rank of Lieutenant as did the doctors though the pharmacists like Simon could only rise as high as Sergeant, a bone of contention amongst the hospital staff. They were also joined by a visiting 13th Parachute Battalion who had come to take their jump training here. This meant that all in all there were probably about 10 men to each of the nurses and the girls were relishing the prospect.

And it seemed the soldiers were looking forward to the night too. As they entered the smoky room there were several wolf-whistles and cat calls and while some found this unnerving others like Grace and her friends soaked up the attention. Why shouldn't they? They were young. Grace was only 22 and tonight she felt young.

Several tables and chairs lined a wide dance floor, to the side a ready bar where cheap Scottish beer was to be served and at the front of the room a band with the name 'Artie Spinelli's Big Band', though Grace doubted that Artie Spinelli was the freckled band leaders real name as he looked decidedly Scottish.

But Artie Spinelli and his band played a decent round of all the popular new American tunes and just as Grace was itching to get on the dance floor Simon was at her shoulder asking her for the first dance.

The first few steps were cautious but Grace was a born dancer and she let him know that it was all right for him to swing her about a bit more vigorously than he was doing and they were soon lodged into a comfortable rhythm.

'You're quite a good danced,' she commented as he led her in lazy circles around the polished floor.

'I know.' This statement was followed by a cheeky spin.

The song drew to a close and they parted though Grace was quick to notice the way his fingers trailed over hers as they separated. It sent her shivering and did not do anything to help her fight the unimaginable urge to reach up and run her fingers through his slightly scruffy blonde hair. She was so concerned with his hair and the small creases around his eyes that it took a moment for her to realise that he was leaning in, closing the distance between them. Suddenly, she was struck by the realisation that he was going to kiss her right there in front of all those people.

'Do you mind if we cut in there, Sergeant?'

And then there was no kiss just two pompous looking Officers hanging on her arm, including one with a rather large moustache. Simon's eyes flicked rapidly from the smug look crawling across moustache's face to the Lieutenant's pips on his shoulders.

'No, sir,' he said through gritted teeth. He snapped off a rather loose salute and stalked away in the direction of the bar.

Grace stared up into the face of the moustache that had just ruined her perfect moment with Simon. 'That was rather rude.'

'Ah, but don't you think it a tad selfish for the prettiest girl in the room to be completely monopolized by just one Sergeant? I'm Lieutenant Roger Wilder. This is Lieutenant Barrett.'

Barrett leered at her unpleasantly and without saying anything to her pushed a glass into her hand. Grace nervously looked in Simon's direction but saw him talking to a few of the doctors from their hospital. Thinking of no reason to do otherwise she took a polite sip of the warm beer.

By the end of the night Grace was beginning to find it difficult to walk. The floor was tilting in a most unsettling manner which she knew had something to with the many drinks the two officers had been plying on her all night. She didn't mind much though as she seemed to have developed a compulsion to happily swallow down anything that was passed in her direction.

'Grace, are feeling all right? You're looking a bit green.' Dorothea was next to her and suddenly holding her up. Grace was suddenly hit with a wave of affection for her kind and pretty friend.

'Dorothea Johnson, you are lovely!' and she flung her arms around her friend almost knocking her flat.

'Grace, have you been drinking?'

'Of course. Haven't you?'

'I think you had better come and sit down.' Dorothea firmly put an arm around her and steered Grace's loose legs to a table in the corner, sitting her beside a sandy haired Lieutenant from the regiment of Paratroopers. 'Grace, this is Lieutenant Malcolm Fletcher.'

'It's nice to meet you,' said Grace shaking his hand though unaware of who had initiated the act. 'You eyes are a very pretty shade of green.'

He bit back a smile. 'It has been mentioned before. Where'd your friends go?'

'Um… Around.' She gestured vaguely. 'They'll be back.'

'They weren't bothering you, were they?' Dorothea asked.

'Oh no! Well, at first I thought Roger and that other one were right berks but they've turned out to be really nice. Roger's bought me at least three drinks.'

'I think a few more than that,' Fletcher smirked.

'We're walking home now,' said Dorothea. 'Do you want to come with us?'

Grace shook her head vigorously in a way that made her feel slightly ill. 'No, no. Look, there's Simon. Simon will walk me home.'

'Are you sure?' Dorothea asked, still concerned.

'Simon will walk me home,' she repeated with conviction before turning to the Lieutenant who was trying very hard not to laugh. 'I was very nice to meet you…'

'Malcolm,' he supplied. 'You too.'

Simon had been sulking in a dark, forgotten corner for most of the night and Grace spotted him now pulling his overcoat off the back of his chair and lumbering towards the door. He had probably drunk about as much as she had but was acting considerably less cheerfully on it.

'Simon!' Grace called for a second time when he ignored her. 'Simon, are you angry with me?'

'No,' he muttered screwing his hands up into fists and digging them deep into his pockets.

'Good. Then walk me back to barracks.'

The air outside was crisp and biting and the cobbled streets were slippery with the beginnings of the morning frost. In her smooth soled dance shoes Grace slid several times before Simon finally offered her a reluctant arm. They walked in silence, he sulking, she too concerned with the excited buzzing of her skin and the almost painful freshness of the Highland air to spare much thought for conversation or Simon's obviously bruised feelings.

'Sergeant!' It was Lieutenant Wilder again. Grace felt Simon tense up at his approach. 'Sergeant. What was the name again, old chap?'

'Anderson, sir.'

'Well, Anderson it appears I find you occupying the attentions of this young lady again,' Roger said in a way which Grace in her befuddled state interpreted as genial but Simon recognized as threatening.

'Can we walk and talk at the same time?' Grace yawned. 'It's a little bit freezing out here.'

'Right,' said Roger. 'You're not walking through town are you? It'll take you bloody hours. Much quicker to go through the woods.'

Grace followed him across the unfenced field to their left, thinking only of getting back to her bed as quickly as possible. 'Are you coming, Simon?'

He hesitated, glancing between the two. 'No, I think I need the walk. See you later, Grace.' And he stalked off down the hill.

'Well,' said Roger. 'That's got rid of him.'

Grace was not one to be afraid of the dark. When she was younger she'd always been the one to impress the older kids by fearlessly walking through the graveyard at night, ghosts be damned. But even she had to admit that the woods were a little creepy. She had walked, ran, marched through these trees a hundred times during the day but at night it was another world.

An owl whistled and she almost jumped out of her skin. Roger tittered. 'Getting a little nervous?'

'No.' She could see his face, sinister shadows cast upon it by the throbbing light of his cigarette end.

'If you're this jumpy in the dark I can't imagine what you're going to be like in the field. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll keep you safe out of the way somewhere. Can't have you ladies fainting all over the shop.'

'I've never fainted in my life,' she said stubbornly.

Roger tittered again as an expression of patronizing amusement which reminded Grace why she had originally thought he was such a berk. She doubted he had ever amputated a leg before. Admittedly Grace hadn't either but at least she knew the theory.

Mid annoyance, she slipped, twisting an ankle in a rabbit hole. Roger reached out and steadied her, mercifully saving her from the embarrassment of falling completely flat on her face.

'Oh!' she exclaimed, gripping onto his upper arm.

'Are you all right, clumsy?'

'Yes. Actually, no. I think I've turned my ankle a bit.' There was a dull pain throbbing in her ankle and Roger led to a conveniently placed fallen log.

'This is embarrassing,' said Grace. 'Just as I was going to tell you how capable I am I go and trip in my girly shoes.'

'Don't worry. I like a girl to be feminine.'

'That wasn't the point! I was just saying, just because I'm a girl doesn't make me any less suited to war than you are.' It was hard to properly convey her anger when her speech was so loose and slurred and there was also that blunt pounding in the back of her head.

'Could you kill someone?' Roger asked calmly.

'Well, that's not really part of my job description.'

Wilder silently slid out his Officer's 38. Webley and stepped into the darkness.

'Where are you going?' she called and was answered by a gunshot not too far away which almost made her scream with its closeness. A few moments later he was back with the pistol in one hand and a dead rabbit hanging from its ears in the other.

'You shot a rabbit!' she gasped, looking horrified at the poor bloodstained creature. She came from the country, she had seen dead animals before but it was the casual pointlessness of the act that shocked her.

'Yes,' he said proudly examining his catch. 'Revenge for your ankle. That'll teach the little buggers to go digging their holes where people are walking.'

'That's hardly like shooting a person.'

'Do you want a turn?' he extended the pistol towards her.

Grace took the gun hesitantly. It felt cold and light in her hand, not unpleasant. Her fingers trailed over it, the handle, the trigger, the barrel. She could see why boys were so obsessed with these things, it was exciting in a perverse kind of way. 'What do I do?'

He gently took her arm and raised it to shoulder height. 'Raise your arm, point at something and pull the trigger.'

'That simple, then.'

'That simple.'

Grace's eyes focused on a tree several yards away, it made a large enough target and it wasn't a rabbit. Swallowing a deep breath, she decisively pulled the trigger. Again she was surprised by the ear-splitting crack as the bullet was launched from the chamber faster than she could see before spinning into the tree with a spray of broken bark.

'Wow,' she breathed.

'Did you like it?' Roger asked, taking the gun from her slack hands.

Grace nodded numbly and for the second time that night someone was drawing closer to her face than was usually acceptable. She could smell the pungent smell of too much alcohol and cigar smoke on his breath and hear the stiff rustle of his clothes as he drew closer. In that moment she shook herself out of her drunken fog and realised with utter clarity that the evening had gone horribly wrong. This wasn't the man she was meant to be kissing. She also knew with certainty that she did not want to be kissed by a man with a moustache.

But it was too late. The moustache was on her and there was no escaping its scratchy presence on her own mouth, the bristles rubbing her delicate skin like a scrubbing brush.

'Umph!' she cried by way of protest as Roger drew back for breath. It was only a momentary pause because a second later he was back for more only this time Grace was quicker and she ducked out of his path at the last second. 'I'm going home now!'

'What?' he spluttered regained his balance. 'What do you mean to do, dragging me out here, leading me on like this?'

Grace ignored the logic of this statement and marched, or rather limped off into the darkness in what she hoped was the right direction.

'You'll get lost!' he yelled behind her. 'You can't get home on your own!'

Yes I can, she thought with determination. I can get home on my own and I will.

And she did, though it took perhaps an hour or two longer than it should of that didn't stop the drunken sense of achievement she felt as she lay in her camp bed back safe in Hut 8b on Tennis Court 1a listening to her friends snoring beside her. And if she could do that, she reasoned illogically than war was surely no problem.

She went to sleep that night looking forward to her leave and the relative calm of her life back home in Aldbourne.

**I know! I know! Where are the BOB guys? I apologize. Next chapter I promise you will have attractive Easy Co. men coming out of your ears. I just wanted to see if my OC was okay. Please tell me what you think!!! Reviews make my world go round!!! The song at the beginning if by the Andrew's Sisters. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Just to warn you there's a couple of incidences of watershed language in here. I'm sure that won't upset anyone but just to let you know.**

The train ride back to the south was long and tedious a feeling probably brought on by Grace's desperation to just get home. It had been almost 6 months since her family had waved her off from a platform at Euston station and, while on some days it seemed no time at all right now she could hardly believe that she had spent so long away from them.

London during wartime was unreal. The sky was the same grey, cloudy one as always but beneath it on the ground it was like a surrealist painting. While waiting for her train to Swindon she walked along the potted and broken roads, dodging rubble and other debris. She saw a house with the front wall blown away leaving the interior rooms open to the elements like a bizarre stage set. And all around her there were people in every uniform from every corner of the world imaginable, British, American, Canadian, Australian, The Poles, The Czechs, The Indians, The Africans and dressed in her own smart khaki dress uniform with the little peaked cap perched on her curls she felt apart of it too.

After her short stop in London there followed the train to Swindon which was cold and mostly deserted besides an old man who seemed to have fallen asleep behind his newspaper. Then the 10 mile bus ride from the busy town into the countryside to the little village of Aldbourne. She got off a stop early and decided to walk the rest of the way, it wasn't raining and after the cold Scottish winter the temperature felt almost mild.

Before she had been to Peebles Grace would have considered this short walk strenuous exercise but after months of daily hikes it was just nothing more than a leisurely stroll. The country was picturesque and early irises were popping up along the roadside and in the surrounding meadowland, her favourite flower which she took as a good sign. Grace stopped to soak up the beauty of her home county and light a cigarette. Dressed in her uniform and breathing in the smoke she felt very sophisticated like Marlene Dietrich, which was the reason that she had taken up smoking in the first place. Everything was peacefully and serene, until that is an Army Jeep came careening down the narrow country lane. She lunged into a hedge, narrowly escaping being splattered by the speeding vehicle.

'Sorry, Lady!' The dark head of the driver called out before disappearing around the bend.

'Yanks,' she grimaced quickly stamping out her dropped cigarette before it set fire to the whole bush. Angrily, she brushed down her lovely new uniform which a minute ago she had been so proud of and had to fight back tears as she saw an ugly ladder running up the side of her stockings. They were her first new pair in years and less than a day on they were already ruined. She snatched her cap from the clutches of a roadside bramble and continued her journey in a considerably worse mood.

The Barnes home was in the centre of the village beneath the shadow of an old Norman church. The house was of mid-size fronted by a post office which Grace's parents had run for as long as she had been alive. Upstairs was home to the five of them; Mum, Dad, older sister Lillian, younger brother Robbie and Grace herself. But when Grace arrived the post office was unusually quiet for a Monday. Puzzling over this Grace dug into her handbag to find the key she hadn't used in so long. Opening the door she called, 'Hello? Mum? Dad? Lily?'

The darkened shop did not respond. With a shrug she moved into the back where the small kitchen and parlour were to be found. It was like stepping 6 months back in time with everything just as she had left it; the over-stuffed armchairs, the garish little ornamental owls her mother liked to collect, the gold carriage clock a wedding present from long ago, and, in pride of place on the mantelpiece a framed photograph of her little brother, Robbie in full RAF clobber.

What was different, however, was the heavy pair of combat boots Grace tripped over as she went upstairs, another sign of the new American influence in the village. Grace prayed that her room had stayed the same after a strongly worded letter she had sent making it absolutely clear that there were to be no dirty soldiers touching her things.

The blackout curtains were still drawn over the one window in her bedroom and, not bothering to turn on the light she threw her heavy bag onto the bed.

'Oomph!' the bed grunted.

'Ahh!' Grace screamed.

'Jesus fucking Christ!'

Grace switched the light on to find a completely unfamiliar and bleary-eyes man dressed only in his vest and underwear sitting up in her bed. Turning the light on she saw the rest of his kit strewn untidily around the room.

'Oh, sorry, Ma'am,' he said in a cheesy American accent which sounded as if it had walked right out of a Humphrey Bogart film. 'You gave me a bit of shock there.'

'You're shocked?' she said. 'You're in my bed.'

'Oh, you must be the other daughter.' He very obviously looked her over with a wide gap-toothed smile. 'You look like your pictures.'

'I would, wouldn't I?'

'Your mom told me it was okay to take this room. She said you wouldn't mind.'

'Well, I do bloody mind. I was told you'd be sleeping in Robbie's room.'

'No, no. Dick, I mean Lieutenant Winters, he's in there. I just got billeted here yesterday. Lieutenant Harry Welsh.'

He stood revealing a skinny body and confidently held out his hand which Grace dubiously shook. She was short herself, only skimming 5 foot and upright she could see that he was only 5 or 6 inches taller than her. He had tightly curled light-brown hair that needed a good comb through and when he smiled you could see his tongue flicking through the gap in his two front teeth.

'I'm Grace,' she said slowly, drawn to his impish appearance despite her displeasure at finding him sleeping in her bed.

'Pleasure to finally meet you, Grace.'

'You've been smoking in my room,' she pointed out.

'Smells like you've been smoking outside your room,' he said with a grin.

His smile was utterly contagious and before long her face was cracking into its own wide grin. 'All right. Where is everyone then?'

'There's a training exercise going on down in one of the back fields. The locals usually like to watch, I guess it's cheaper than the movies.'

'Why aren't you there?'

He winced exaggeratedly. 'I am recovering from a particularly bad hangover.'

'Won't you get into trouble?' The idea of what would happen to any of the girls if Matron caught us slacking off didn't bare thinking about.

'Baby, I'm an Officer, I can get away with anything,' He said breezily. 'Don't worry, I'm being covered for.' He winked in a way that with any other man could be creepy or even lecherous but with him she sensed was only friendly. 'Hey, I could take you down there if you want. I bet you're anxious to see your family again.'

'Thank you very much, Lieutenant Welsh.' It felt strange pronouncing the word the American way, loo-tenant rather than lef-tenant.

'Please, Harry,' he insisted before taking a look at his clothing. 'I just need to get dressed first…'

Grace caught herself blushing and instantly closed her eyes as if they hadn't just been having a whole conversation with him standing around in his underwear. 'Oh, right. I'll just be in the hall.'

Outside the door to Robbie's room, now this unknown American Lieutenant's room was ajar and Grace's urge to snoop was getting the better of her. Stealing a glance she saw that unlike Harry Welsh, his fellow soldier was compulsively and almost terrifyingly neat. Clothes were folded in a neat pile on a chair, a dress uniform hung brushed and laundered from a hanger on the wardrobe door. Even the desk looked as though it had been laid out with a ruler, a notebook 3 inches away from a book which ran exactly parallel to a photo frame.

'Scary, huh?'

Welsh snuck up behind her and, now he was fully dressed he was looking fairly smart though he had done nothing about his hair. Grace blushed for the second time in five minutes, this time at being caught nosing.

'I didn't mean to pry.'

'Nah, he won't care. And if he did he probably wouldn't say anything. Shall we go?'

Welsh was a talker. Grace had an affinity with people who were naturally chatty as she was one of those people herself and in during the short walk over to farm area to the East of the village they found themselves talking like people who had known each other for years rather than minutes. She told him about her field nurse training in Scotland and he told her about the many failings of the US military. Much of what he said she'd already heard through letters from her family; they were a Regiment of paratroopers who'd been training and generally raising hell here since September. During that time they seemed to have made themselves quite at home and in many cases the prospect of war seemed to have been completely forgotten.

'Come on,' he said as they reached the top field where a crowd seemed to have gathered. 'You can see our boys in action.'

The whole village seemed to have gathered around one of the fenced off fields from where emanated loud explosions. People ooh'ed and ahh'ed and there was the occasional round of scattered applause which leant a feeling festivity to the gathering as if they were all gathered around a May Pole.

'What's going on, Tommy?' Grace called to one of the little boys who was desperately trying to squeeze his skinny body through the crowds.

'I think they're practising the mortars,' he squeaked with excitement. 'They're the best bit! Give us a boost please.'

'All right, then. Jump on.' She ducked down so that he could climb on to her back. He was about four years old and thin as a rake, a child of the war who had never known anything else.

'Yes! It is the mortars!'

Welsh indicated that he was leaving and began to force his way to the front of the crowd, offering her a cheery wave as he left.

'You haven't seen my parents, have you Tommy?'

'Who are you again?' the little boy said in mischievous mock confusion.

'Of course you know who I am. Don't play daft with me Tommy Wheeler. It's Grace Barnes, the girl who caught you playing silly beggars on that Jerry Messer last summer.'

He giggled, that adorable sound that only small children could make. 'I remember. It's just you've been gone for such a long time.'

'Not long enough. And just for that you'll have to find someone else to be your climbing frame.' She dropped him suddenly but carefully amid squeals of protest.

'Oh, Grace!'

'No. You should never accept lifts from strangers.'

She left the disappointed boy there and went on the hunt for her family. Drawing closer to the source of the excitement, with much difficulty and with the use of her elbows, she saw a small squad of the Americans loading the mortar gun and firing it at a target painted on the ground about 500 yards away. They seemed to be quite good shots and every time they hit their target the red-headed squad leader stood up to take a theatrical bow.

'Change 3. Range 600. Load. Fire!'

Finally Grace caught sight of her sister's chestnut brown head bobbing amongst the throng, difficult as she wasn't much taller than Grace herself. Caught up in the excitement of seeing her big sister again she threw her arms around her, catching her from behind in a big bear hug. Lillian Barnes screamed before realising who it was drawing attention from the surrounding crowd.

'Gosh, look at that uniform,' she said. 'Very grown-up.'

Grace, channelling Bette Davis did a small twirl for her.

'You're looking good too,' Grace said without lying. She remembered the last time she had seen her sister, barely months after her husband had been reported dead in North Africa. The horrible news followed almost immediately the death of the unborn baby she was carrying. Then she had been gaunt, drawn out like washing on a line, constantly tired, her skin pale and sun-starved. Now her cheeks were rounder and her eyes brighter and all in all her sister looked happier than Grace had ever seen her. 'Where are Mum and Dad?'

Lillian dragged her towards their parents but the reunion was cut short by a sudden spattering of rain. The crowd began to break up leaving the soldiers continue their pretend war without the benefit of an audience.

As soon as they were all back at home Grace's mother began to cook. The kitchen was the domain of Flora Barnes, she had given birth to all three of her children in that room, it was where she had fed them and raised them and it was the centre of her home. Cooking was her favourite past time, though no one could remember her being particularly keen on it before the war. I was commonly speculated that she took rationing as a personal challenge.

'It's so lovely to have everyone together again,' she gushed over the clanging of pans. She was a cheerful, talkative woman like Grace had grown to be where as Lillian was quiet and insular like their father, John. 'Well, not everyone but maybe Robbie will be able to get leave again sometime soon.'

'And where would you put him?' asked Grace, maintaining a safe distance. Some mothers liked to teach their daughters to cook, Grace's mother took any offer of help as an insult. 'Where are you going to put me? I already came back to find a strange man in my bed.'

'I didn't think you'd mind! They're our guests! We couldn't possible expected the two of them to share Robbie's tiny room.'

'So I'm bunking up with Lily?'

'She does have the double bed.'

She turned towards her sister who was laying the table. 'And are you okay with this?'

Lillian shrugged ever the appeaser. 'I don't mind.'

Grace noticed her sister only setting four places at the table. 'Don't they eat with us, then?'

'Oh, no,' said Flora. 'They mostly eat at the base, in fact they're barely here. You won't even notice them. They're lovely boys.'

'Bunch of lay-abouts,' their father snorted dubiously from behind his paper. From his letters Grace could tell that John Barnes took as kindly to this American invasion as if the Germans were goose-stepping down Swindon High Street.

They sat down to a meal of shepherd's pie made from illegal mince, and bakewell tart made from powdered egg. As they were clearing the table the door opened and in came Welsh and the man Grace assumed to be Lieutenant Winters. He was a tall, even featured man with bright red hair neatly parted and combed to one side.

'Grace, come and meet Lieutenant Winters,' Flora said excitedly, quickly patting down her hair and smoothing non-existent creases out of her dress. Winters blushed even at the touch of Grace's feminine hand on his and compared with her first impressions of Welsh she couldn't ever imagine him doing anything as bold as winking.

'I've managed to persuade Dick here to join me for a night on the town,' said Welsh. 'And when I say night on the town I mean a drink in the pub. Would you care to join us, Grace? Let me buy you a drink to celebrate your homecoming.'

Grace, completely forgetting the problems that drink had caused her only the night before nodded. 'Yeah, great. Lillian, are you coming?'

Her sister wasn't usually the type to go out. She was quiet, busy places didn't suit her so Grace was a little surprised but pleased when her sister agreed to join them. It was a good sign, she told herself, it should that her sister was recovering from the horrors of the past year and that things were getting back on track.

The local pub was a place she felt she had grown-up in, most of the kids around Aldbourne did, it was the centre to village life. Some of Grace's earliest memories involved looking up at the polished bar and crawling around between the stool legs. It was a place where the local population had sat and drank and gossiped for nearly 100 years, but not anymore. The place was overrun with Americans. Americans drinking watery British ration beer, playing darts, chatting up the local girls wearing American bought nylons and wearing bright American bought lipstick. Even the air was thick with the distinctive smell of expensive American cigarettes.

'Good Lord, what happened here?' Grace asked Lillian, shouting over the noise of boisterous paratroopers.

'I know. They are a bit loud aren't they?' Lillian was scanning the room distractedly as if looking for someone. 'Look, I'm just going to pop out for a minute. I'll catch up with you later.'

'But where are you going?'

'I won't be long.'

Without answering the question she left her younger sister there slightly confused. But Grace shook off the confusion and turned to her two handsome companions. 'Are either of you two boys going to by me a drink?'

'We're on it,' said Welsh, grabbing a very reluctant looking Winters by the arm. 'You see if you can't rustle us up a table.'

The task was clearly impossible. The place was packed to the rafters and there was none of the quiet, middle-aged atmosphere that she had come to expect from the place.

'Hey, baby, can I get you a drink?' said an oddly familiar voice. She turned and was greeted with a face to match with the voice, dark hair, shinning eyes, sly smile, and made the connection.

'You!'

'Huh?'

'You're the bastard who almost ran me over this morning!' She had only caught a glimpse but it was definitely him.

The shiny brown eyes widened in recognition. 'That was you?'

'Yeah, that was me,' she said.

Before the offending party had a chance to defend or even introduce himself they were joined by one of his friends for the darts board, a Sergeant if his uniform was anything to go by. This one was stockier and sturdier and more in the line of what you expected a soldier to look like, intimidating with heavy features dominated by an extended jaw.

'You thinking of trying your luck there, George?' said his friend. 'Because you should know, miss, that my buddy here does not have two dimes to rub together. He ain't that good at darts.'

'That's unfortunate,' Grace replied, eyeing up this more likely looking suitor with a quick flick of her lashes. 'Because he owes me a new pair of stockings.'

There were many whistles and cat-calls from the assembled lower ranks at the sound of the risqué word "stockings" but Grace was unfazed.

'Well you listen here, miss… What's you're name, sweetheart?' said the Sergeant.

'Grace.'

'Pretty name, pretty face. That there is George Luz, he's a nobody…'

'Hey!'

George Luz's protests were quickly brushed aside with a friendly shove. 'You ever need anything you come to Sergeant Bill Guarnere, you got that?'

'Bill, what the fuck? Are you pulling rank on me?'

'Luz!'

George Luz suddenly jumped to attention at the appearance of Winters. Grace had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing at his excellent imitation of a jack-in-the-box.

'Sir.'

'Luz,' said Winters calmly and with more authority than she had expected from the quiet, bashful man, but with the smallest twitch of a smile letting everyone know he wasn't serious. 'We all put up with that mouth in barracks but is it really necessary in public?'

'No, Lieutenant.'

'Good.' He turned back to Grace. 'It'll be quieter outside.'

She obediently took his arm and walked away but as she did so distinctly heard Sergeant Guarnere laughing, 'Now he was pulling rank!'

Outside the rain had stopped leaving dampness in the air and puddles scattered all over the ground.

'I'm sorry if they were a bit…' He rubbed his nose by way of a nervous gesture

'Oh, don't worry about it. I've had to put up with much worse before.'

He led her over to one of the benches where Welsh was sitting with the drinks; two pints and a glass of water. He caught her staring, 'Dick, here doesn't drink. Regular little Puritan aren't ya?'

Grace looked over at him questioningly, she'd never meant someone who didn't drink, it was the norm in this village. 'Religious reasons?'

'Nope, just never tried.'

'Well, we'll have to do something about that,' she smiled and sipped at her drink. 'You haven't seen my sister have you?'

Welsh smirked. 'Maybe she's with her new fella.'

This surprised Grace. As far as she knew Lillian was completely devoted to the memory of her husband, after all he had only been dead a year. The idea that she would have moved on so quickly did not sound like her sister. 'Who?'

He shrugged. 'Don't know. I just know she has one and he's one of us.'

Grace took another gulp of the lukewarm beer, pensively and decided to drop the subject for now.

That night Grace traced her fingers of the silver frame of the one photograph Lillian had in her room. I had been taken on her wedding day over two and half years ago and you could tell even from the black and white photograph that it had been the hottest day of 1941. The sun had been shining and they were all sweltering but smiling none the less. Rationing had just began to take its clutches on everyday life so planning a wedding had been difficult resulting in the bridesmaids' dresses being made out of some old curtains and an almost sugarless wedding cake but Lillian had looked beautiful. The broad smile spread across her face just took your breath away it was so full of happiness. Beside her, her new husband, Paul looked down at his smiling bride. He had never been the most photogenic man, always squinting and frowning but you could ignore that and simply see the adoration with which he looked at Lillian. A month later he was gone with his armoured regiment to North Africa. They saw him once more a year and a half later when he was on leave and by the spring of 1943 Lillian had received the news that he was dead.

Grace watched as he sister carefully set her hair into pin curls as she did every night. Sometimes it seemed as though she and the girl in the photograph were completely different people.

'What side of the bed did Paul sleep on?' Grace asked, surprising even herself with her bluntness.

'The right.'

'Where do you want me to sleep?'

'On the left.'

She climbed into the left side of the cold bed cautiously, aware of the intrusion she was forcing but unable to drop the question she was dying to ask. 'So, who was that man you were with tonight?'

Lillian slid into the bed without looking at her. 'Will you stop talking about it? I feel guilty enough as it is.'

She switched the lamp off, plunging the room into darkness.

**A/N: Many thanks to Captain Ty for being my 1****st**** reviewer, hope this chapter doesn't disappoint.**


	3. Chapter 3

Grace spent the next feel days of her leave lazily. Helping around the post office, catching up with the neighbours but mostly flicking through magazines or reading. Her mother was right when she had said that they barely saw Welsh and Winters. They were mostly on the base and when they were at home Winters was in his room so quiet that the only time you knew he was there was when the door was closed. He did endear himself to her mother, though, by offering to go to church with her on Sunday. Welsh was a little noisier, you knew when he was home when he tripped over the raised doorstep, sometimes drunk more often just clumsy. Grace had decided that she liked him immensely. Winters she was less sure of mainly because he was so self-contained, and the non-drinking bit threw her a little.

About a week after her return to Wiltshire she walked 3 miles up the road to one of the nearby farms. This was wear her friend Vera had worked in the Land Army for the past three years. Most of the girls in the Land Army were from cities in the Midlands and lived in huts built in the yard but Vera was a local girl, both she and Grace had been scholarship students at the local grammar school and had been friends since they were 11 years old.

Grace could not help herself thanking God that she hadn't taken her mother's advice when she had suggested joining the Land Army. For one thing the uniforms were appalling, breeches done up at the knee and vile mustard yellow stockings. Grace wore wellies beneath her dress and kept out the cold with her Army issue overcoat, it was a mismatched ensemble but far better than Vera's uniform.

She helped Vera lead out the two carthorses, Petal and Blossom, to the ploughing field at the far end of the farm whilst they discussed the changes that had occurred in the village since the Americans had arrived. Vera also showed off her war wounds, the left foot crushed beneath Petal's heavy hoof, the right speared with a rake, her forearms scraped from tripping over a hose just last week. She really did look as if she had been in battle.

'It leaves a really hideous scar,' she complained referring to the grazes running down her arms. 'And I'm supposed to be going out tonight.'

'Where?' asked Grace always eager to hear about a night out.

'Up to Swindon. Everyone is. You should come be my date, I don't have anyone else to go with.'

She agreed and they began excitedly planning what they were going to wear. They didn't have many new clothes, any half-decent tea dress would cost a year's worth of coupons but to the girls any old table cloth could become an exciting new outfit.

On the way back they passed through a potato field where they saw men pulling out the crop with their bare hands. 'Who are they?' asked Grace.

'Italians,' answered Vera pick up their pace but they had already been spotted. The dark haired men began blowing kisses in the direction and yelling things in their own language of which Grace only caught the cries of '_Bella! Bella!_'

'You've got some good-looking ones there,' said Grace favouring the boys with a wave which seemed to please them quite a bit.

'They come over from the POW camp in Lyneham but they don't do any work. The Germans are better but they're as grumpy as anything.'

They left the Italians behind and Grace changed the subject. 'So do you know if my sister's seeing anyone?'

'I don't know. Probably. Everyone's got a Yank these days.'

'But not you?'

'There all smooth gits really. It's all "Gee, Honey" this and "Ah, sweetie" that. They waltz around here like movie stars…'

But before Grace could tell her that she quite like the movie star treatment she was being manhandled into a hedgerow. 'What the…!'

'Shhh!' hissed Vera. 'We're hiding.'

Grace lowered her voice. 'Who are we hiding from?' Vera nodded over the hedge and she peeked over in anticipation but saw only a dark haired American walking alone, his head was down and his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. 'Him?'

'Yes, him. Now please be quiet.'

Grace grinned mischievously. 'One of your movie star lovers?'

'Maxine?'

They looked up at the source of the deep Southern drawl and found the dark-haired paratrooper staring down at them, confusion etched all over his undeniable adorable face. His eyes were round a child-like, his skin pale and contrasting with his almost black hair. Grace, however was just as confused. Who was he calling Maxine? Both girls stood up sheepishly.

'H… Hello,' stuttered Vera. 'We were just um…'

'We thought we saw a snake,' supplied Grace lamely. 'Um… an adder maybe.'

His forehead crinkled. 'Right.'

'Eugene, this is Grace,' Vera said quickly. 'Grace this is Eugene Roe. We've met a couple of times before in Swindon. I didn't know where you were stationed.'

'Yeah, I'm a medic with the 101st. It's nice to meet one of Maxine's friends m'am.'

Again with the Maxine. Grace smiled widely whilst at the same time trying to quietly pull a twig out of Vera's ruffled blonde hair.

'Oh, you'll like Grace. She's a medic too…'

'Nurse,' whispered Grace finally grasping hold of the twig.

'Nurse,' Vera babbled. 'That's similar because you both… well, you know.'

Grace inwardly cringed at her friend's inability to gather a complete sentence but looking up at Eugene she saw that it didn't matter, he was absolutely smitten. Vera had been lying, she did have a Yank. 'I've got to get home,' she said. 'Catch up with me later, V… I mean Maxine.'

She skipped down the hill, occasionally glancing back to watch the signs of tentative flirtation between the too. She almost rubbed her hands with glee, there was nothing she liked better than watching two people fall blissfully in love. A few minutes later Vera barrelled down the hill after her all hot and flushed.

'Welcome back, _Maxine_,' Grace said.

'About that…'

'Yes, about that.'

'I didn't think I was going to see him again!' she protested. 'He asked me my name and Vera just sounded so dreadful so out Maxine jumped.'

'Oh, Vera what were you thinking of?'

She shrugged going redder still, right up to the roots of her pale blonde hair. 'The Andrew's Sisters. I was thinking of Maxene Andrews.'

Grace burst into laughter. 'When are you going to tell him the truth? The wedding day?'

She received a gentle shove from Vera. 'Oh, give over. There's not going to be a wedding day.'

'That's what you think.'

'I've done something else that might upset you,' said Vera. 'I asked him to the dance with me tonight.'

'Well, I hoped you would,' replied Grace. 'Anything else would have been rude.'

'You're still welcome to come with us…'

'No, no,' she said amiably. 'I don't want to be a third wheel. I will find myself a gentleman to accompany me.'

'But it's tonight!' protested Vera. 'Who are you going to ask?'

Grace smiled with confidence. 'Don't worry, I'm already on it.'

The grey stoned Norman church chimed the quarter hour across the village green as Grace returned home. It was the middle of the day and the streets were empty save for a single red-headed figure sitting astride the cemetery wall. Grace moved towards him offering a conciliatory smile.

'Good morning, Lieutenant Winters!'

He looked up at her blinking having been completely unaware of her presence. He set aside the notebook he had been scribbling in. 'Morning, Miss Barnes.'

'It's Grace.'

'Grace.' He tested the name in his mouth thoughtfully before allowing it to fall into an awkward silence.

'Who are you writing too?' she asked noticing his hand slide surreptitiously over the page.

'Oh… Uh…' he stuttered looking shy which was really the predominant expression she had seen from him so far.

'Girlfriend?' she teased.

'No, just a friend.'

'But a female friend.'

Winters closed the notebook with an air of finality and Grace worried that she'd seriously offended him.

'Are you busy tonight?' she said abruptly startling him even further.

'What?'

'Some friends of mine are going up to Swindon tonight. Apparently half the town is. Do you want to come?'

'Yeah… I don't know. I don't really get off base much at weekends, so…'

'It's not just a you and me thing if you're worried about your girlfriend.' He looked as if he was going to protest the girlfriend point again but thought better of it. 'You can invite along anyone you want, it's an open invitation.'

He paused for a moment before answering delicately. 'Can I think about it?' And he looked as though he would think about it.

'Of course. You know where I live,' she said a little bit taken aback by his ambiguity. It was a dance, what was there to think about?

'Across the hall.'

Grace was not at all surprised when he knocked on her bedroom door a few hours later. She was not the kind of girl who was usually resisted and she would have been disappointed if he had said no. She invited him in without being too extravagant in her gestures, treating him like an easily spooked cow, and making sure she kept the door open. Anything as suggestive as a closed door might make him bolt.

'Are you coming tonight?' she asked.

He agreed but suggested that they bring Harry as well. Grace agreed. She would need Harry as a buffer if Winters turned out to be as boring as he had so far appeared. So far what she had seen was a polite man, who didn't drink and went to church with her mother. He had no vices, Grace didn't like men without vices, she found them suspicious.

After a few moments of silence in which he neither left nor intimated that he had anything more to say, Winters took out the notebook he had been writing in earlier. 'I was wondering if you would read this. I don't know if she'd like it or not.'

Grace took the book with a mischievous glint in her eye. 'So she is a girlfriend.'

'No.'

'Okay, someone you'd like to be a girlfriend.'

She read the letter as he indicated. It was addressed to a girl named Annie who lived in Pennsylvania and it was fair enough as letters to your grandmother went. He wrote about the weather and the farmyard animals, there may even have been a mention of what he had had for supper the other night. Grace only read a few paragraphs knowing that the rest of it would be much the same. She handed the book back.

'This reads like a Jane Austen novel.'

'Huh?'

'It's too restrained! You're talking about the weather. "The weather here is a little wetter than you might find in Pennsylvania." That's not what she wants to hear.'

'You think I should be more… poetic?'

'Poetry's over-rated. Trying being a little personal. Tell her something real.'

'Real?'

'Yes. Write to her like she's someone special. Tell her things you wouldn't tell anyone else or otherwise she'll stop writing back.'

He looked down at the book thoughtful before nodding in agreement. 'The weather's real,' he said and Grace believed that she spotted a hint of amusement.

Lillian Barnes was 24. She had married at 21. By 23 she was a widow her life over before it had even begun. Soon it would be the first anniversary of the day she had received that fatefully telegram which had so coolly stolen her life. They had been married less than two years and very soon the day would come when he would be dead longer than they had been married, yet she would always be a widow.

She didn't look like a widow. Her skin was smooth and unlined, her waist was slim and her thick hair wasn't to know a grey hair for at least another 10 years. All she saw when she looked in the mirror was the same face that had always been staring back at her.

The evening was creeping up on her and she had to lean close to the reflective glass as she subtly applied make-up. She wore it like a woman who didn't need to cover anything up. She looked good, as good as the day she had married Paul Fraser in the parish church and better than she had looked any day since. But something was missing. She cast aside her own make-up and landed on Grace's possessions, only a week here and already messily littering the room, not that Lillian would ever complain.

In a move of uncharacteristic boldness she lined her lips in a bright, patriotic red. The colour made her lips look full and sensual. After two years this was her way of finally casting off her widow's weeds. She would not be defined by Paul's death and all it had taken was someone to tell her that.

He was waiting around the corner. He never came up to the house. He had met her parents once but they didn't like him, to be honest she couldn't think of many people that did like him. There were people that feared him and those who respected him but very few he could count as friends. She suspected that was precisely the way he wanted it. He was very self-contained, not exactly sullen in his silence he just didn't speak unless he had something worth saying. Not everyone understood but it was exactly what Lillian needed, she was tired of empty words.

'You ready?' He ground his cigarette end beneath the heel of his boot. Paul had always smoked a pipe like an old man, of those disgusting cigars. Lillian had decided very early on that she much preferred kissing a man who smoked cigarettes.

She couldn't help but compare him to Paul. Her first love with her second. Paul had brown eyes, his were icy blue. Paul had gone no farther than Birmingham before leaving to die in Africa. Her new lover came from a place called Boston, Massachusetts, they were words she hadn't heard before though she never was much good at Geography.

On the bus ride over to Swindon they sat apart from the other couples and groups who are noisy and energetic. They didn't belong with them. Occasionally she'd make an observation, point something out and he'd nod and take it all in. She liked to show him her world, as small and inconsequential as it may seem. Once during the journey his fingers lightly stroked the back of her hand. That little gesture was filled with more meaning and intimacy than she'd ever experienced before. Suddenly, she wasn't jealous of the girl on the back row being thoroughly kissed by a plain looking USAAF pilot. He had stroked her hand and that meant something.

They paused a moment before entering the dance hall. She scuffed her shoes on the curb. He finished his second cigarette of the night. It was an unnecessary action, even from the street they could tell that the air inside was almost opaque with smoke, grey wisps escaped into the night air every time the door swung open. But they couldn't just go through the door, the moment needed reflection and a climatic build. This was their first time out together as a couple; the strange, abrupt American Lieutenant and the quiet widow from the Post Office.

Inside the room was colourful, men almost universally khaki with splashes of air force blue, girls more than making up for it in red, blue and white dresses, any other colour would have seemed unpatriotic. Grace was noticeable even from a distance and Lillian was struck by that familiar pang of envy watching her younger sister light up a room with a simple flash of one of those empty smiles. She had come with Dick and Harry but already seemed to have attracted a wider circle of admirers. How could she be so carelessly flirtatious, so frivolous with her emotions? Lillian wished her sister wasn't there. Even as a little child Grace had been such a strong personality that she made Lillian feel quite small and faded. She wanted to enjoy this night.

Welsh tapped Grace's shoulder and nodded towards the door. 'Do you see who your sister's brought?'

She turned around and saw Lillian looking frankly stunning, hanging awkwardly on the arm of a very attractive Lieutenant. He was of a good height, her eyes were just level with his chin, had thick brown hair and eyes that seemed very still and hardly blinked. If anyone looked more different from her husband it was him.

'Who is he?' she asked Welsh.

'Lieutenant Ron Speirs,' he answered. 'A platoon leader from D Company and one scary SOB from what I've heard. But that's just what I heard.'

She watched them move to a corner table and mulled this information over. Welsh was right, there was something odd about the way he moved. His movements were too measured as if he were holding something back that could snap at any time. She supposed that was what came with being a real soldier.

'Right,' she said with false brightness as she turned to her little group of Easy Company men which included Luz from the Pub and his friends. 'Who's dancing with me next?'

'Don't you want to go and talk to your sister?' asked Welsh.

'No, I think I'll wait to be introduced first. Dick, how about a quick spin?'

There was some uncertain laughter from the lower ranks at this suggestion. 'Uh,' said Luz cautiously. 'The Lieutenant don't really dance much.'

Grace raised a challenging eyebrow. 'You don't drink, you don't dance. You ought to be careful Lieutenant or someone might start think you're boring.'

Her extend hand left him no chance for refusal and he reluctantly allowed her to lead him onto the sprung dance floor. The band started up and Grace slid his unwilling hand low down on her waist. 'It's a slow one so you'll have to get a little closer,' she instructed.

He shuffled a few centimetres towards her body and she took the initiative and closed the rest of the gap. Grace talked him through the rest of the dance.

'Take a step forward, that's it. You're in charge, you tell me where you want to go.' She pushed his chin up so that she was looking him straight in his bright blue eyes. 'This is how you're going to dance with your girl when you get back to America.'

As the song progressed he began to loosen up a bit and by the end of the 5 minute tune he was smiling almost laughing at his wrong steps and awkward saves. His smile was nice, bright and sunny.

'And that's why I don't dance,' he said when the song finally ended.

'It wasn't that bad,' she answered. 'Maybe I'll pick on you again later in the night.'

She glanced over his shoulder and saw her sister and Speirs leaving the dance floor. She hadn't been aware of their presence while she had been dancing with Winters. Her eyes connected with Lillian's and, patience not being her strong suit marched over to their corner.

'Hello,' she said, directing her greeting at Speirs who regarded her with almost rude frankness. 'I'm Grace, Lillian's sister. I expected she's mentioned me.'

'Not really,' he answered coolly.

Lillian placed herself firmly between the two and laughed nervously. 'Grace, this is Ron Speirs.'

'Oh, I know. I've heard lots about you.' This was a lie.

A sharp pain in her elbow let her know that Lillian was demanding attention. 'I'm going to the bar. Do you want anything?' Speirs shook his head.

'I'll go with you,' Grace said brightly.

The two girls, one still firmly clinging on to the elbow of the other crossed over to the bar but did not order any drinks. Lillian was looking flustered but intent. 'What do you think?'

'He didn't say much. I suppose he's good looking.'

Lillian looked at her with something Grace was alarmed to interpret as pity. 'Grace, looks aren't everything.'

'I know,' she retorted.

'Look, some people might tell you things about Ron. Don't listen to them, decide for yourself, okay?'

**A/N: Another chapter, hope it's okay. I'm think the whole Aldbourne scene's getting tired so our heroine's off to France next time. Thanks for all the lovely reviews!**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Omg. I have had the worst time writing this chapter. First massive writer's block, second the bloody website wouldn't let me post. Ahhh!!!! Sorry for the delay everyone!**

8th June 1944

'I don't know what you girls all think but this seems a rather slow invasion.'

Mary was right. The pace at which they were moving towards France was less than impressive, in fact they had been travelling for 2 days and had only now hit Hampshire. All of Britain seems to be making a slow, khaki migration south. The roads were lined with supply trucks, transport vehicles and ambulances crawling along at a snails pace, a winding human caterpillar, and all full of noisy young people like the nurses.

Grace had been called away from Aldbourne in a hurry a few weeks after that night in Swindon and training had been moved to a large manor house in Sussex. All the work seemed to have stepped up immensely. They learnt all about blood transfusions and amputations, how to stitch a shattered jaw all things they were told would be essential once the invasion had begun. Rumours of the coming day had been swirling around for weeks and then nothing until one morning at the beginning of June they work up to find about 50 percent of the hospital's doctors had disappeared without a word said. What they didn't realise was that the next day was the 6th June and D-Day. Then men, including Simon Anderson had gone over on a tank landing craft to bring back the initial wave of wounded. The rest too were soon deployed and now here they were approaching Portsmouth Harbour on the back of a truck and bursting with anticipation.

'I heard,' said Dorothea. 'That we were supposed to be invading Denmark.'

'No, Dorothea, we're going to France,' replied Mary slowly as she stirred a pot of boiling water of small camp stove. 'Denmark's the other way.'

'Not now, you silly goose! Early in the spring when they got us all ready. I heard from a chap in the ATS that we were all set to invade Denmark or Norway or somewhere like that but the Germans caught a couple of our spooks so they had to call the whole thing off.'

'What happened to the spooks?' Grace asked.

'They were never heard of again!' she ended sensationally with the air of someone telling a ghost story.

'That's cobblers. Why on earth would we want to invade Denmark? What's even in Denmark?' asked Maggie.

'Nazis, you'd assume,' said Grace.

Maggie was the only one of them who looked halfway decent in her combat uniform, an olive green jumpsuit called 'Battledress'. It was obviously made for someone who had no consideration for women's hips or busts and for someone short like Grace it was frankly ridiculous, she had had to roll back the sleeves and legs several times to escape being drowned. The shallow tin helmets were also a source of much amusement especially when someone thought to use theirs as a Frisbee. The game came to an abrupt end when one of the ambulance drivers received a bump to the head which required stitches.

'How's the tea coming along?' Grace asked Mary.

'Just about done I think. Someone lean forward and see if the driver wants any.' They all pulled out their new but already well used tin mugs as the tea was served.

'What I want to know is what happened between Dorothea and the charming Lieutenant Fletcher last week?' said Grace. The man in question had should up unexpectedly several days ago with the expressed intention of reacquainting himself with Dorothea before going off to war.

'Oh, yes!' cried Maggie wickedly. 'Do tell.'

'Did you kiss him?' asked Mary.

'Oh course she kissed him,' Grace said. 'It would have been rude not to.'

'The question is where,' said Maggie salaciously making them all gasp and giggle.

'Maggie!' screeched Dorothea who, while very confident and forthright in other areas was notoriously prudish. 'You can't talk like that. What if Matron hears?'

Maggie smiled. 'Just give us the details.'

Dorothea took a deep breath and cast her friends a very coy look. 'He was a perfect gentleman, well, you saw how attentive he was. We just talked, he's very funny and he walked me back to barracks and…'

'And…'

'And he kissed me.' She said this in a very low voice.

'Is that all?' said Maggie, disappointed.

'Was he a good kisser?' asked Grace.

'It was nice, I suppose. A little wet and uncomfortable.'

'Uncomfortable?'

'Well, he could have at least taken his pipe out of his pocket.' Dorothea had no idea what they were all laughing about.

They spent the night in a make shift camp just outside of Portsmouth. There were no boats to take them over so they would have to wait until morning. The conditions were primitive, a sign of things to come but they approached it with the enthusiasm of a trip with the Girl Guides.

The next morning they were handed out their ration packs which were to serve for the next 24 hours once they were on their way to Normandy. Every part of the luggage was strictly monitored.

'In each of your ration packs,' said the supply officer wearily with the air of a man who explained this many times before. 'You have oat biscuits, a Billy can, 1 bar of chocolate, tea, milk, sugar, 4 pieces of lavatory paper and…'

'Excuse me, sir,' said one of the nurses named Sarah, raising her hand. 'I don't have the tea or any of the rest of it, just these cubes.'

'That is the tea.' They examined the solid cubed of tea with horror that made them wonder what they had got themselves into.

Night was slow coming with the double daylight savings but when the pale sun finally did begin to dip it also began to get chilly. Finally they were loaded onto an old troopship, stowed away deep in the bowels of the ship in a cabin with no porthole and several fragile steel framed bunks. They were then told that they were not to take off any part of their uniforms including their British Army berets and that their tin helmets were to be worn on a piece of string around their necks at all time in case of a night attack. When all was loaded and the ship began to move the girls ran up to catch their last glimpses of England in the dying light. It looked grey and miserable. Turning East, France was still hidden behind a thick layer of cloud.

Maggie got seasick which completely tore her reputation as the glamorous, aloof one. The waves weren't even high, merely soft curves on the Channel's glassy surface and they had spent the best part of the night gently bobbing off the coast of South England waiting for their turn to cross over to the Normandy Peninsula. Yet still Maggie was moaning and groaning on the floor of the cabin like a victim of the bubonic plague. Grace was secretly glad to discover that Maggie Harris wasn't as perfect as she led everyone to believe. To assuage her guilt, when the other girls ran up on deck Grace remained with invalid.

'Why don't you go?' Maggie muttered hoarsely. 'I don't need someone to hold my hand.'

'No, but you do need someone to hold back your hair.'

She smiled weakly but her face was still grey. 'Please tell me we're nearly there.'

'Not long now I shouldn't think,' said Grace without really knowing at all.

There were several moments of silence filled with the creaking of the rocking ship and the distant calls and whistles of the crew. It all felt very nautical. Maggie finally spoke. 'I don't know what I want least, to stay on this boat or get off.'

'What are you talking about? We're going to France, Maggie. It's what we've been training for forever.'

'And I can't help thinking we've been a bit naïve about it all,' she said seriously. 'I don't think war if going to be half the big adventure that we've been told about.' She paused deliberately. 'I have an older brother, did I tell you? Albert. He was at Dunkirk in 1940. He made it back, almost drowned but he made it back. Thousands didn't. It wasn't the great triumph everyone on the news made it out to be. He's not a coward but he saw things…'

Grace absorbed the first piece of personal information that Maggie had offered without know how to comfort her or what to say to make it better. 'I'm scared too.'

Suddenly Mary fell through the door wide-eyed and wind swept. 'Come on you two. Come and see what we're a part of.'

Exchange a confused look Maggie and Grace hauled themselves to their feet unsteadily and reluctantly followed her up on deck.

If Grace had been scared before the sight she witnessed now did not help. The sun was beginning to rise and in the weak dawn light they could see what the night had hidden; hundreds of ships moving steadily towards the looming coast of France and them completely centre stage. Looking down in the water, her heart stopped, the pale, ghostly shapes of dead bodies floating to the surface, bloated by the sea.

At the solemn pace of a funeral procession they approached Arromanches, and the beach that had been code named Gold. The closer and closer they grew the clearer they could see the magnificent structure of Mulberry Harbour. It was Churchill's pride and joy, a pre-fabricated artificial harbour six miles long which had been towed across the Channel especially for the invasion.

On the shore the movement and activity was immense. Thousands of men, hundreds of trucks and jeeps and tanks all scuttling and busy and important. In the distance there was the muted but undeniable rattle of gunfire broken occasionally by the deep boom of artillery. Grace looked at her fell nurses and suddenly felt obscured, they didn't belong here, they were unwelcome foreigners in this strange and dangerous world of men's war.

A motor boat was brought along side the ship and a rope ladder was thrown over the side. They all looked doubtfully at it. Grace herself hadn't climbed down a rope ladder since she was 8 years old and playing in Robbie's tree house. Then she had been barefoot now she was laden down like a pack horse.

''Ere!' one of the men in the boat called, squinting up at them. 'There's girls up here, there is!'

'Finally!' said his companion. 'Which one of you ladies is going first?'

The girls looked around anywhere but at the offending rope ladder. None of them wanted to be the first to make a fool of herself or worse fall into the cold, bottomless sea.

'I'll go,' announced Dorothea eventually as they all knew she would. They watched with bated breath as she climbed slowly but deftly down the shaking ladder into the arms of the man waiting below.

When it came to Grace's turn to climb she found it easier than she had imagined. The trick was leaning into the rope to counter-act the weight of her heavy pack dragging her down. She took one rung at a time, breathing in short concentrated gasps with her gas mask banging against her knee the whole while.

'Let's be having you!' called the man in the boat as she reached for him.

On land the air was thick with the sharp tang of cordite and the sand was sticky and black with tar. Standing on two feet Grace again was struck by how small they were amongst all the activity but she felt safe again once they were loaded onto trucks marked with the Red Cross and driven away from the beach.

Whoever they passed stopped and pointed at the first women to arrive in Normandy since the invasion and the girls all waved back. Maggie instantly recovered from her sickness. 'You know we're probably the only girls for miles around.'

'What about the French girls?' asked Grace.

'Oh, they don't count,' Maggie said knowledgably. 'Now if only these uniforms weren't so ghastly.'

The roads they passed showed clear signs of battle. Shattered trees, jagged craters and burnt out tanks. They watched the Pioneer Corp whose job it was to clear the wreckage attempting to pull a smouldering tank from its grave in a ditch. Indian sappers, recognizable by their turbans scanned the roads around them with metal detectors and they were suddenly aware of the intermittent sign posts reading 'Achtung Minen' in black foreboding letters.

They were offered protection by a Company from a Northamptonshire Infantry regiment who walked beside the trucks but they didn't feel in any immediate danger until they moved further inland. Now they were crawling through the remnants of a French village. It was deserted now, everyone who lived here was either dead or had fled leaving broken shutters clapping in the wind, doors smashed open and chimneys toppled. When Grace half closed her eyes she could see the settlement as it had once been and she saw Aldbourne. She saw people's homes and livelihoods.

Grace leaned off the side of the truck to talk to one of the infantry men walking alongside. He was the youngest looking soldier she had ever seen, only just eighteen with skin still fighting sprays of acne. 'You don't have a cigarette to spare, do you?'

The boy nodded and patted around in his jacket before surfacing a battered packet of Regencies which he offered to her. 'Here you go, Lieutenant.'

'It's just Grace. No one's ever called me that before.'

'Private Walter Hannay,' he said.

'Well, Private Hannay, I was wondering if you couldn't possibly tell us where we were going.'

But her question remained unanswered disappeared beneath a sudden high-pitched whine. Then a second. Then a third. There was confusion as the men fell instantly to the ground. There was an audible gasp from the driver, a heavy thump.

'Sniper!'

'In the belfry!' yelled one of the scouts. 'The bugger's in the belfry.'

The men swung their rifles their upwards towards the high spire of the village church. Grace was vaguely aware that the truck was still moving but veering towards a grassy verge. They jumped from it. There was more screaming. Someone managed to get to the truck's cabin and pull the handbrake before the vehicle crashed.

The fire fight suddenly died. The Captain directed some of his men to check the church and the surrounding graveyard to ascertain that this had been a lone sniper. 'We've got two wounded.'

Without thinking the nurses began doing their job. They grabbed their temporary aid kits and silently raced towards the wounded. The driver had been the first to be hit and was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious. The second was Private Hannay who Grace knelt beside with Maggie and Sarah. She swallowed bile and her own high pitched cry as she saw the state that the boy's body was in. Firstly he had been hit in the shoulder; it was a clean wound, when Maggie examined it she saw that the bullet had gone straight through from back to front and had not shattered the collar bone. What was most distressing was his left foot which had been crushed beneath the runaway truck.

Hannay wasn't crying like a human being, his whimper was more like that of a beaten dog and when Grace finally steeled herself to touch the pulpy mess that was his foot his scream was blood curdling.

'Oh, God,' she murmured trying not to be squeamish.

'It hurts! It hurts!' the young man sobbed. 'I want my mum!'

'Didn't they see the Red Cross?' asked Maggie.

The Captain shrugged. 'Probably. It doesn't mean anything here on either side.'

'The driver's dead,' called Dorothea from the front.

Grace tried to unlace the crushed boot but it was so heavy and tightly laced and the foot so fragile that she was scared to tug it much harder. Hannay squealed and thrashed, his face was pale and his breathing shallow which was a sign of shock. 'Sarah, I think it'll be safe to inject the morphine otherwise he'll die of shock.'

Sarah fumbled in her aid kit and pulled out a basic 10mg syrette of morphine shaped like a miniature tube of toothpaste. It was a staple in any nurses' field kit and allowed for intramuscular injection. She stabbed it into his upper arm and his muscles suddenly untensed.

'If I take off his boot or his foot's going to come off with it,' stuttered Grace. 'We can't move him either.'

'Is everything all right here?'

'Does it look all right?' Grace snapped sarcastically before turning and looking into the steel grey eyes of Matron who had been travelling in the truck behind them. 'Oh, Matron…'

'This will need to be amputated,' her superior said coolly. 'Don't you agree, Sister?'

She looked at Walter Hannay's pale, young face now drifting into unconsciousness before glancing down at his obliterated foot. 'Yes, Matron.'

'Do you have a surgical saw?'

'In the truck.'

'Sister Harris,' she said to Maggie. 'Would you oblige?' Maggie dove back into the vehicle. 'And you have a clamp ready in your kit?' Grace nodded. 'Good. Then this should be no bother at all. I shall tell you exactly what to do and you will perform my instructions to the letter. Do you understand, Sister Barnes?'

Grace was trembling all over and yet inwardly cursing herself, she had wanted to be so brave. In the lectures back in Peebles she had known this procedure back to front but here on the side of a blood stained road with a Company of Infantry watching her and a boy's life in her hands all that information had suddenly evaporated. She managed to whisper, 'Yes, Matron.'

She wouldn't have been able to do it without Matron's crisp clear commands; it meant she didn't have to think for herself. She took her step-by-step through the ligature of the main blood vessel, the transection of the muscle in his lower leg and finally handed her the oscillating saw which would be used to sever the bone.

And with each step she grew calmer and more sure of herself. She grew used to the sight and the smell of the gore it was just the textures that she needed to disassociate herself from, the warmth of the blood, the soft muscle tissue, the feel of metal grating through bone.

That night she lay in her folding canvas bed still in the clothes she had been wearing for the past 48 hours she listened to the distant artillery fire and the heavy pounding of the rain on the tented roof. She thought about Walter Hannay on his way home, returned to his mother broken and she thought about her American friends and wondered if war had been as cruel to them as it had to Walter.

**A/N: A little bit of a short chapter but I found it hard to write, and no Easy Company (Next time I promise). Just so you know I'm not a doctor, I know nothing about chopping people's legs off I'm just trying to make it sound as if I do. Thanks for all the reviews they really make me happy. **


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I was wondering, do I need to do one for every chapter? If I do this is it. **

Unexpected German resistance mean that rather than the 600 bed base hospital they were expecting outside Caen, Grace's hospital was a 200 bed casualty clearing station, one of many that were springing up all along the road linking Caen and Bayeux. In fact, even just a few days after the invasion the sheer amount of medical traffic along this single road led to it being dubbed "Harley Street" by all the doctors and nurses.

Working in the field hospital was like wondering through Piccadilly Circus it was so busy with different nationalities and it was by no means an exaggeration to say that each reacted to pain differently. The British naturally adopted the stiff-upper lip and refused to complain about anything, especially the English though the Welsh were more likely to play the sympathy card if they thought it would get them a date. The Poles, Czechs and other Eastern Europeans were stoic, not even speaking in their own languages, the Canadians, good-natured in the face of adversity. The Americans were the ones to watch, dreadful flirts even with half a leg blown off. But a Frenchman would whine over a splinter.

Some of Grace's first patients were a group of Canadians speckled with minor gunshot wounds. Minor was not how she would have put it but they had been told to prioritise.

'We were shot up by some Americans,' complained one of them as she dressed his wounds in fresh bandages. 'Fucking Yanks, they're all trigger-happy the lot of 'em.'

'Trigger happy?' she asked.

'Yeah, jumpy, you know. They'll shoot anything that moves. We didn't even get a chance with the Krauts, ain't that right, Don?'

'Uh, huh,' said his friend, examining his arm which was bleeding through its bandages. 'I think I might have got one but it was dark, I couldn't tell.'

'And that's the war over for us. Well, the next couple of weeks at least. They'll be packing us off to England.'

'That's safest isn't it?' said Grace.

'Yeah, but we just got here. We barely had a chance to do anything.'

'Sister Barnes!'

Grace groaned. Matron's caterwauling had now become a regular part of her day. Grace knew why the woman had taken such an intense disliking to her, it was clear as soon as they had started treating patients that Grace was not cut out for the Army's impersonal way of nursing. She just couldn't see what was so wrong about chatting a bit while she worked.

'If you've finished here, Sister,' the middle-aged woman said tightly. 'There's a young man over there who could use your assistance. _Quickly_.'

She disappeared in a cloud of busy self-importance, probably to go and chew someone else out. Grace twisted her head to get a better look at her next patient. He was pale, which was probably due to the blood loss, and clutching his arm but he was alert and sitting upright. He could wait. She turned back to her Canadians.

'Yank, is he?'

'Yes. I better go see to him,' she replied.

'Infantry man is he? If he is, don't bother. They're the near-sighted idiots that wound us up here,' the Canadian said bitterly.

'No, he's a paratrooper. Does that mean I have your permission to treat him?'

He shrugged before wincing in pain at the action. He smiled ruefully. 'Go on, then. But, Sister, don't treat him as nice as you've been treating us.'

'I'll be very terse,' she promised.

Grace washed her hands quickly before crossing over to her next patient. 'Has an orderly been around to collect your details?' she asked officiously. Matron was only concerned with paperwork and Grace didn't want to give her another reason for anger.

'Um… no.'

She looked up into his very blue eyes. Not only did he have very blue eyes but also very even features. He was a Private but somehow he just seemed too pretty to be an enlisted man. Of course, all of these observations were made whilst sighing in exasperation at the orderlies' insistence on forgetting the proper procedures.

'Fine. Name, rank.'

'Private Webster. David Kenyon.'

'And your number?'

He reeled it off and she scribbled the information of his blank chart. 'I don't suppose they've written anything about your morphine intake either?'

'That's okay, I haven't had any,' he said with a perfect white smile.

'Good, that makes things simple. Would you like some?'

'No, I'm good.'

Finally she sat down to examine the wound. His whole sleeve was sodden with blood, it was impossible to see anything clearly. 'I'm going to have to cut your uniform,' she said reaching into the pocket where she kept a sharp pair of scissors.

He winced as she pulled the heavy fabric away from his skin revealing a deep shrapnel wound running the length of his forearm. The whole sleeve was pulled away giving her room to examine the gash for smaller shards of metal.

'The Eagle Badge on your shoulder,' she said conversationally. Matron may not believe in mindless chatter but Grace thought it would at least give Webster something to think about besides someone digging about it his arm. 'That's a 101st thing, right?'

'Yep, the Screaming Eagle,' he said through gritted teeth.

'You didn't happen to be stationed in Aldbourne did you? Only that's where I'm from.'

'Really?' he said, beautiful blue eyes wide. 'I was there but I never saw you. It's not a big place.'

'I was away most of the year. My name's Grace, Grace Barnes.'

He smiled. 'I know. I heard that woman yelling at you right across the Peninsula.'

'That's my Matron you're talking about.' She bit back a grin.

'Bit of a dragon?'

'You could say.' She pulled out the final piece of shrapnel and began bandaging his arm. 'What Company are you in anyway?'

'H. Headquarters Company. It's not the place to be, we're always at the back.'

Grace shook her head. 'What is it with you men always trying to play the big hero? I'm done, all right. Please try and stay out of trouble.'

He looked down at his arm curiously. 'Um… Miss. Grace, do you think I'll be able to write?'

'Write? Um… not for a while, I shouldn't think.' No one had ever asked her that before, it didn't really seem like a priority.

He looked disappointed. 'I'm writing a book, you see. It'll be a true life account of life as a paratrooper. It's why I joined this goddamn circus to start with.'

'Sister Barnes!'

Matron. Again. Grace had time to whisper, 'Good luck with the book,' to Webster and roll her eyes in an unladylike fashion before approaching her leader.

'Yes, Matron?' she said in as sweet a fashion as possible without trying to sound sarcastic.

'Sister Barnes,' she whispered furiously. 'If I have to reprimand you one more time on fraternization--'

'I was just…'

'The Americans may think that such familiarity is acceptable but you must remember that you are a member of the British Army. The pips on your shoulders aren't just a rather fetching design piece! Do I make myself quite clear?'

'Yes, M'am.'

'Now get him patched up and move on as promptly and professionally as you can.'

Grace knew it was childish but she couldn't help sticking out her tongue at the woman's retreating back.

'Grace!'

She jumped. Almost biting off her tongue as well. She turned around to see Dorothea.

'Where you just sticking your tongue out a Matron?'

'No.'

Dorothea frowned. 'Never mind. Do you speak German?' she was whispering exaggeratedly.

'No. Why?'

'I do,' said Webster, who unknown to them had been listening to the whole conversation. He shrugged at their accusatory looks. 'What? I'm a writer, I'm supposed to be observant.'

'There's a difference between observing and eavesdropping,' reprimanded Dorothea sternly.

'What do you need a German speaker for?' he asked.

Dorothea looked down at him condescendingly. 'I don't know if I can tell you.'

'Oh, give over, Dorothea,' nagged Grace. 'You've got a secret, spill.'

She looked agitated, checking over her shoulder nervously. 'All right, he can come. But make sure Matron doesn't notice he's gone.'

It was all right, on the other side of the ward the dragon of the 6th Hospital was busy lecturing some boisterous burns victims about proper decorum in a hospital. She would be busy for at least half an hour. 'All clear.'

Grace bent down and helped Webster to his feet. 'Who are you, by the way?' asked Dorothea.

'David Webster. Late of Harvard University, current US Army grunt.'

Dorothea raised an eyebrow at Grace as if to say "smart one, isn't he?" which of course she would never say in front of him. 'I'm…'

'Dorothea. I know.'

'He knows everything, this one,' said Grace.

Dorothea led them out of their tented ward, past the kitchen, past the Doctor's barracks, past the Resuscitation tent conveniently placed next to the morgue, towards the back of the hospital where there was a small tent with a RAMC NCO standing outside. The man was lazily reading a book, his rifle balanced beside him but quickly stood to attention when they approached.

'Who's he?' he asked Dorothea nodding towards Webster.

'Matron says it's all right,' she lied lamely without even answering the question. The guard didn't bother pressing the issue further and stepped aside with a shrug.

'What's going on?' asked Grace as they were swept into a tent. She didn't need an answer though. Inside the tent was a ward similar to their own but smaller, less than a dozen beds and lying in these beds were men wearing uniforms Grace hadn't seen before except on news reels at the cinema. 'They're Germans.'

'Prisoners of war,' said Dorothea. 'Doctor Phillips didn't want it to get out that we were treating them back here but no one thought to bring along anyone that spoke German.'

Doctor Phillips, a tall doctor with a very ruddy complexion came marching down the ward, blood spattering his white jacket and uniform. 'Sister Johnson,' he said to Dorothea. 'What's going on here?'

She flushed nervously. 'You said find a German speaker and he was the only one I could find.'

Phillips eyed Webster up and down, taking in his tattered US uniform uncertainly. 'I meant a nurse or an orderly.'

'He was the best I could find.'

The doctor looked as if he were about to object but he looked tired, he had deep grey circles under his eyes which had not been there before they had arrived in Normandy. 'All right Private…'

'Webster.'

'Yes. Mind you keep this to yourself. Johnson, he's over there.' He pointed to an occupied bed by the tent flap.

Dorothea beckoned them towards the bed and Grace saw that the occupant was a teenage boy, blonde hair, blue eyes, angular cheekbones, a poster boy for the Aryan race. He glared at them with hostile eyes. 'This is our patient. He won't say his name, either because he doesn't understand or he's just ignoring us. A lot of the older soldiers speak at least a little English and have been very obliging but he's Hitler Youth. They've been completely brainwashed.'

Grace looked down and noticed from the lumps in the sheet that the boy's leg had been amputated right up to socket. 'What happened to his leg? Why has so much been taken off?'

'German medical policy,' said Dorothea. 'That's what Doctor Phillips says. Any wound that looks like it's going to be trouble they just amputate. They're so busy retreating they don't have time for anything else. In the case of this lad here they just leave them at the side of the road.'

'What do you want me to ask him?' said Webster.

'For a start his name, regiment. Tell him it's for the Red Cross, they can let his mother know he's alive.'

Webster related the questions to the boy. Grace didn't know much about the German language she hadn't had to speak it since school but Webster seemed to be fairly fluent though his accent was a little clumsy. The boy followed his words with a look that could have burnt. After a few seconds of silence he answered tersely following his reply by spitting in Webster's face.

He jerked back in disgust. 'Gross!'

'What did he say?' asked Grace.

'His name's Kurt Dexel,' answered Webster wiping his face. The boy laughed cruelly. 'He won't say what regiment he's from or anything else, probably doesn't want to give away their position. And he's a little punk.'

Grace risked being spat on herself by peering under the sheet at his leg. The stump was yellowing and inexpertly stitched together. 'It's getting infected. Have you given him penicillin?'

Dorothea shook her head. 'POWs don't get penicillin.'

'Isn't there some kind of rule against that?' asked Grace.

'Yeah, it's a little thing called the Geneva Convention,' answered Webster sarcastically.

Dorothea shrugged. 'It's the doctors' decision. They say we haven't got enough to go around as it is without handing it out to the enemy.'

Grace checked her watch, she'd been here for longer than she'd expected to be. 'Gosh. I have to go; I'm on Matron's radar today.'

Dorothea nodded. 'All right. I'll return Webster as soon as I've finished with him.'

Webster caught her on her way out, grabbing Grace's hand but dropping it before she could even register that they'd touched. 'So, maybe we could meet up in Aldbourne once you get back? I could show you my book or I could just by you a drink.'

Grace smiled widely, aware that she was being asked out and relishing the idea of how much Matron would disapprove if she was hearing this. 'Well, Private Webster, I suppose it couldn't hurt. If you can find me that is.'

**A/N: Chapter 5 down. I know you were all looking forward to some Easy action here but I could only fit in poor Webster and technically he isn't an Easy guy until he gets transferred before Market Garden. This chapter's a bit iffy because it's not actually based on the mini-series but his book "Parachute Infantry". I don't know if any of you have read it but there's a massive long gap in the narrative after he gets injured a few days after D-Day, so I thought I'd fill in the gaps. **


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I would like to issue a public apology to the people of Wales and especially to THE DEADLY ANGEL. For the record I have been to Wales on several occasions and it is a lovely place full of lovely people. Pre-empting the complaints for the French contingent, France is great too. : ) **

12th June 1944

After 4 days in the Casualty Clearing Station, the nurse were moved slightly further north to the small town of Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont which had been captured and secured by the Americans on D-Day. Here they worked with a group of French nuns in beautiful, twisted Gothic church. The pews in the main part of the church had been stolen or burnt for firewood leaving a large empty space in which to set up folding beds beneath the streaming light of the ancient windows which had once been filled with stained glass but had thankfully been removed in 1940 for the sake of the art's protection. This was lucky as much of the rest of the church had been damaged during the American bombings in the previous week.

If there was thing that most struck Grace about working with the nuns was that they always moved slowly. They moved calmly and gracefully no matter what the emergency and while that was perfectly fitting for a nun, the young nurses bursting with nervous energy, found it incredibly frustrating. However, the women were also completely unflappable something Matron was keen the girls aspire to especially with the injuries they were seeing which only got more and more horrific.

Grace was stripping beds along the wards. Beds whose former occupants ranged from the incredibly unfortunate who had died painfully in an unfriendly land, to the lucky who had managed to buy a ticket back to England and out of this hell-hole. They cleaned the bloodstained sheets in a huge vat of bubbling, boiling water which had quickly turned a rusty red colour. Grace stirred the murky water with a broken chair leg and stared blankly into its impenetrable depths. She wished the sound of the sloshing water would drown out the moans and gasps of the wounded men or the steady pound of German artillery which seemed to creep closer and closer with every passing breath.

'What?' Grace jumped as a one of the nuns started babbling away at her in French. Grace's French was tolerable but she couldn't understand a word of this woman's jabbering. She felt sure she was putting on that ridiculous accent on purpose. '_Oui. Oui.' _She repeated as a way of cutting her off. She had gathered from the woman's Gallic hand gestures that she should be seeing to the man who had just been carried in on a stretcher.

She slid along the rows of horizontal men to the newest arrival. He had arrived with several other men, one who was horrifically wounded. A passing glance told Grace that this man's right eye had been completely destroyed and both his legs were shattered, about half a dozen people including Doctors were gathered around him snapping at each other urgently.

Grace passed over them to her charge and was struck by the Screaming Eagle again though looking down she couldn't have said whether she had seen him in Aldbourne or not. His face was smeared with a horrible mixture of dust, mud and blood and his check was badly cut up. She thought it absolutely dreadful that no one between here and the Aid Station had even thought to wipe the man's face. This could be ignored as it was the pool of blood over the man's groin that was most worrying. Grace took a deep breath and plastered a carefree smile over her face.'

'Good morning, Sergeant…'

'Lipton.'

'Lipton. I'm Sister Barnes and I will be your nurse today.' She reached towards his trousers. 'I'm just going to take a look.'

He jerked violently away and instantly winced in pain. If his face hadn't already been drained of blood it would have been bright red. 'Uh, m'am, I'd rather you didn't.'

'Oh, grow up. I'm a nurse; I've seen it all before.' She hadn't really but he didn't need to know that. She pulled out her scissors to clear an area of fabric away from his trousers and removed the saturated bandages which had been inexpertly used to staunch the flow of blood.

'Okay.' She sucked in a breath of air through her teeth. 'You'll be pleased to know it's not as bad as it looks. You just need stitching up.' Sergeant Lipton looked so horrified it was funny. 'Which I will not be doing. I'll get one of the surgeons, one of the _male_ surgeons to come and take a look at you. I'm going to rebandage this and then not look down there again. Okay?'

She quickly finished and moved on to the considerable safer zone that was their face and began washing it with a damp rag.

'Excuse me, m'am,' he said. 'But I think the morphine's wearing off.'

'I can't give you anymore before surgery, sorry.' The blood cleaned away she could see that the cut running from under his nose across his cheek was deep. 'This is going to scar. It'll make you look very piratical.'

'You think?'

'I'm going to stitch this up and it's going to hurt.'

Once she had threaded a sterilized needle she braced herself from the punch of broken flesh. She hated pulling thread through skin, it made her feel like Frankenstein cobbling together his monster. She tried very hard to stop her tongue poking out as she worked, something she always did while concentrating.

A deafening barrage rattled the room, shaking the high windows and causing dust to fall from the rafters. It sounded closer than it had been all day and even the nuns looked up in alarm.

Grace finished her work and stood up. 'I'll go and give your information to the doctors. They'll pick out the shrapnel. Which company are you from?'

'506. 2nd Battalion. Company E. Thank you.'

Dorothea was on tea duty, the cushy job that everyone was after but was usually reserved for those who had intensely displeased Matron. Dorothea had been banished to mug collection after a near fatal morphine mix-up that morning and thorough telling off. Matron had shouted louder than they'd ever heard before and Dorothea's eyes were still red-rimmed from crying.

'I can't stand it anymore,' she muttered as she past Grace. 'I just wish the noise would stop.'

Suddenly a stray artillery round exploded in the yard. The nearest window shattered spraying glass all over her. The room fell silent. Dorothea's lip trembled and the mugs on the tray shook with her hands. 'I'll go and get a broom,' she said finally.

Very calmly she walked across the room into the kitchen. Grace followed her, watched her place the tray on the table and burst into tears. She hugged her friend tightly.

'What's the matter?' she asked.

'He's dead,' she sobbed. 'Malcolm's dead, I just know it.'

Grace's stomach sunk. 'Have you heard something?'

'No,' mumbled Dorothea. 'But the longer I'm here and the more people I see being brought in I just can't think of any way he could have survived.'

Grace breathed a sigh of relief and let Dorothea cry herself out uninterrupted for a few minutes before offering her a hankie. 'Do you like him very much?'

'Yes. He said that once we were back in England, maybe we could marry. That can't happen if he's dead!'

'He's not dead,' said Grace calmly, hoping against hope that she was right. 'He's not dead until you hear for definite that he is. There's not point in worrying about it until then.'

Dorothea blew her nose noisily before nodding. 'That makes sense.'

'Of course, it makes sense. He will be fine and you will get married and have a dozen fat babies. I wished I could find someone who wants to marry me, if only so I can get out of this wretched Army.'

The girl's sniffles died down and she sheepishly handed back the hankie which Grace promptly threw to one side. 'Thank you, Grace. I was just feeling a little teary today.'

'Okay,' nodded Grace. 'I have to go now. Are you sure you're all right? Make yourself some sweet tea, that's what my mum always does.'

'But we haven't any sugar!'

'Well, just tea then.'

The next day the Americans were back from their manoeuvres around Carentan. Grace stepped out of the hospital, her ratty hair tied back in an unsightly ponytail watching the bewildered soldiers stagger into the safety of the town in the early morning light. There didn't seem to be any order, the tired men just sleeping where they fell on doorsteps, around the stone War Memorial, a dirty, bloody army of tramps. Grace herself felt like joining them. She had been up all night on night duty. After a couple of hours sleep following a 20 plus hour day she was back on her blistered feet and so the whole hideous cycle started again.

Caught up in her own cage of thoughts she turned to return to the church only to trip over a large, heavy sack. A heavy sack which, on closer inspection revealed itself with a pained grunt to be a sleeping figure.

Grace almost screamed when she saw that the figure she had fallen over was in fact Harry Welsh. She did let out a shrill squeak. He cracked open an eyelid and glanced upward. 'Well, hey there, babydoll,' he muttered, semi-consciously.

'Hey, yourself,' she answered cautiously sitting beside him. 'You're alive.'

'So I've been told,' Harry said. 'Though I don't feel much like it. You been worrying about me?'

'Only a little. Do anything exciting today?'

He shrugged nonchalantly but there was that patented Harry Welsh smile playing across his lips now. 'Took out a tank.'

'Nothing exciting then.'

'Hey, don't let him play it down,' said Winters approaching them, limping with a dark haired officer. He too looked tired, more drawn and a hundred years older than he had done in Aldbourne. 'It was heroic. Oh, Grace this is Lewis Nixon, our esteemed Intelligence Officer just promoted up to Regiment.' He indicated the man beside him.

Nixon had dark hair, dark eyes and a heavy five o'clock shadow. Every one of his features was dark and set on a canvas of pale, pale skin. It was an appearance which on paper sounded vampiric but in reality the half smile and cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth made him seem a little more approachable.

He nodded vaguely, more intent on lighting his cigarette with a broken Zippo. She handed him the pack of matches she kept in her uniform. 'Here.'

'Oh, thanks…' he trailed off lamely.

'Grace,' she supplied a little bitingly. 'He just told you.'

'Right, I am sorry. I wasn't paying attention,' he smiled but there was no shame there only an annoyingly confident flirtatiousness.

'Ignore him,' said Winters. 'He's just a jerk.'

Nixon nodded. 'It's true, I am.'

'So what happened to your leg?' asked Grace in reference to Winter's obvious injury. 'Please don't tell me you've did something stupid?'

'It was stupid,' said Winters bitterly. 'I was just standing there. Didn't get to take a tank down with me.'

'Can we stop talking about that?' grunted Welsh who looked as if he had fallen asleep again. 'It was traumatic. I don't want to relive it.'

'Yeah,' snorted Nixon, now languidly smoking on the cigarette Grace had enabled for him. 'You tell that to Private McGrath. Poor kid. Here, Harry take your lighter.'

Grace left the three men, thinking it best to return inside and help with the rush the hospital was suddenly under with their arrival. Not that she was much help; she and Maggie had been asigned the worst duty of the lot, bedpans. It was unpleasant and didn't bear dwelling on.

'Are you all right?' asked Maggie after a few hours. 'You look dead on your feet.'

Grace shook herself out of the extended daydream she had drifted in. The morning had been a continual yawn, punctuated by moments when she had closed her eyes to blink only to find it very difficult to open them again.

'Night duty,' she yawned. 'I feel like I haven't slept for a week.'

'We should have a break then,' said Maggie firmly. Matron was luckily busy so she called to the next most senior figure, Senior Sister Wallace who was younger, kinder and far more willing to understand that the nurses were not super-human. 'Sister Wallace, can we have a break? Barnes is absolutely chin-strapped.'

Sister Wallace looked them up and down, noting Grace's dishevelled appearance. 'All right, Sister Barnes can go, she was on night duty. But not you Harris.' Maggie started to moan. 'I'm in charge of the rotas, don't think I don't know that you were off early last night. Back to work. Barnes, five minutes.'

Maggie flounced and Grace grinned. She grinned even wider when she saw the familiar face of her joy-rider, George Luz. He and several others had been sitting by the bed of the Sergeant she had been tending to yesterday and who was due to be shipped back to England.

'Hey, Grace!' George Luz ran up to her as much as he was able to run with his heavy radio equipment on his back. 'I want to talk to you.'

'Nice to see you too, George,' said Grace with a raised eyebrow. 'What do you want to talk about?'

'Your friend, the leggy blonde.'

Leggy blonde did not fit the description of Sister Wallace, she was stout and mousey. 'You mean Maggie?' She tried to keep the shock from her voice. George was sweet, funny and all right looking but Maggie was on another level looks wise.

He nodded. 'Yeah. What's it gonna take to get a date with her?'

'A commission,' she answered simply.

'What?'

'It's a well known fact that Maggie Harris only steps out with Officers, preferably someone with the rank of Captain or higher. She's an elitist. She wouldn't give an enlisted man the time of day.'

George frowned, rolling this information around thoughtfully before breaking into a sudden, carefree grin which seemed to fit better than pensive. 'Uh huh, but that's them other guys,' he said not to be put-out. 'Wait 'til I turn that old George Luz charm.'

'What charm?' called one of the men in his platoon who had been listening in. 'You've got about as much charm as a mule.'

George looked irritated. 'Yeah, you laugh it up, Perco,' he insisted. 'You just wait. When I set my sights on something…'

Grace laughed along with the rest of them, not unkindly but stopped suddenly when she noticed Mary tapping her shoulder.

'Matron wants to see you inside.'

Her stomach sank. 'Inside?'

'Yes. She's in the cellar, I think.'

Grace shuddered at the thought of that loathsome woman in the dank recesses of the underground cellar. Suddenly in her mind she was no longer a pinched women nearing middle-aged but a bat stretching its long, leathery wings around her and baring its threatening fangs.

Mary looked at her sympathetically which scared Grace even more. 'Good luck.'

Grace took the back staircase into the cellar where they kept the supplies. Box upon boxes of morphine syrettes, plasma bags, and bandages all careful documented and organized under Matron's watchful, inflexible eye. Grace was uncertain if she was expected to knock, but after a few seconds and a few scribbled notes on her clipboard, the woman looked up.

'Sister Barnes,' she said. 'Where were you just now?'

'I was…' Grace stuttered but felt sure the question was rhetorical.

'You were outside talking to those men weren't you?'

'Staff Sister Wallace said it would be all right,' she replied quickly.

'You do not take your orders from Staff Sister Wallace. You take them from me.'

'But they were men from home. Back in Wiltshire…' Grace trailed off knowing there was no way out of it. In the Army excuses were not accepted, she'd best just suck it up and take the inevitable lecture.

'Are you aware that London has sent a message instructing me and the other Matrons in the field to ensure that our girls are looking presentable at all times?' she said. 'You are to wear make-up, do your hair every night, look like women. They say it will help the men's morale. Do you agree?'

'Well, yes. That might help.'

'My concern is with the men's physical well-being, not with their morale,' snapped the older woman. 'My concern is the morale of my nurses. You're young women and I know young women, they are naïve and they are emotional, neither of those traits have a place in war. If I allow you to flirt and chat to these men you will get attached, some of you may even think you're in love. You won't be able to resist a worldly young man in uniform. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

'Um…'

'Think of these men you were just talking to, a great majority of them are going to get hurt, some of them are going to die. It's best to stay unattached. Clear?'

'Yes.'

'Dismissed.'

**A/N: The drama continues…**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Wow, there is so much Matron hate about I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor woman. I'm keeping her out of the way for the next few chapters if only to protect her. **

30th August 1944

_Dear Grace,_

_Things are, as per usual, dull as ditchwater here in Richmond. My mother keeps me practically locked in a cage and the only opportunity to get out and about is when I'm helping out at the RAF hospital down the road. I tried to explain to my mother that I am on __leave__, I don't want to spend it nursing but she gave me a lecture about attitudes that win the war. Who knew she was so patriotic?_

_I trust you've heard the good news about Dorothea and her Lieutenant Fletcher. Of course you have. She's probably sent everyone and the milkman long, detailed accounts of the great marriage proposal of the 20__th__ Century. Speaking of marriage proposals, have you received any from your dashing Americans yet? I've had 3 already this week from grateful pilot types and it's only Wednesday. I suppose some good has come from my charitable works. _

_So, I've been thinking about what Matron said to you about your fraternising and I occurred to me that there's probably a story behind it. Picture this; a handsome serviceman, terribly unsuitable, possibly of French extraction, nursed to health by a young(er) Matron. What follows is a passionate and tempestuous love affair but short lived because all too soon he is killed in action, the words "Matron" on his lips. Poor Matron is left heart-broken and can never love again and thus becomes a bitter and twisted dictator. Let's assume for the sake of dramatic effect that Matron is devastatingly beautiful and can be believably portrayed by Vivien Leigh when Hollywood gets a hold of the story. Let's also assume that the hypothetical handsome serviceman knows her first name._

_However, this is all merely speculation. She's probably just a frigid cow who likes to use the British Army instilled power she has over us to make our lives as miserable as hers. To put it simply she is (understandably) jealous of our youth and undeniable good-looks._

_Here's hoping that you're being wildly improper in Wiltshire!_

_Love & Kisses_

_Maggie._

Grace read the letter again without a smile. If it had come at any other time it would have cheered her up no end but she was bothered with a problem that could not be solved even with Matron jokes from one of her best friends.

She leaned against the bathroom door listening to her sister retching. It had been happening almost every morning for the past two weeks, ever since Grace had arrived back in England. Grace was not naïve, she was a nurse, and she knew what it meant when a woman was sick every morning. The thought weighed on her just as heavily as it weighed on Lillian.

'Are you finished?' she called through the door after a few minutes silence.

The door unlocked and Lillian emerged, looking pale and drawn as she did every morning, her eyes red rimmed and raw from the crying that kept her awake at night.

'You can't keep doing this,' said Grace firmly. 'Some one is bound to find out sooner or later. I'm sure Mum knows.'

Lillian shook her head meekly. 'No. She'd have said something if she knew.'

'She may not know now but give it a few weeks. I may not know much about babies but I know it soon becomes pretty obvious.'

She tried to draw her sister into a hug but was pushed aside as Lillian stormed upstairs and into the bedroom. Grace followed making sure the door was tightly closed behind her. No one was in. Harry and Dick were on the base, their parents were busy in the shop but since Grace had discovered Lillian's secret she had been feeling a growing sense of paranoia.

'I don't know what to do,' mumbled Lillian, sinking down on it the bed with her head in her hands. 'I just don't know what to do.'

'I know what you should do,' answered Grace. 'You should tell Speirs. That's the only thing you can do. Once you've told him everything will be all right.'

'Yes! Because he'll marry me,' cried Lillian before lowering her voice. 'He'll marry me because he's not like those other GIs who wouldn't spare a second thought for a girl they'd…'

'That's good isn't it? Once you're married it'll be fine.'

Lillian sighed exaggeratedly just as she had done when Grace was little and had said something stupid which someone two years older was bound to know. 'I don't want him to marry me just because I'm… you know.'

'You can say pregnant.'

'I wanted him to marry me because he loved me. I don't want to trap him,' Lillian burst through sobs. 'Besides, Paul's only been dead less than a year. What will people think of me marrying some stranger?'

'They'll think a lot worse of you when they find out you're having a baby with some stranger. And that you're not getting married!'

Lillian shook her head. 'You wouldn't understand. Now go downstairs, I need to get ready.'

Grace went downstairs as her older sister instructed and she went outside. She breathed in the fresh summer air which was already threatening to turn autumnal. Lillian was quiet but she was stubborn and quite irrationally. It was exactly like her not to want to impose on anyone, not even the man who'd got her in this mess. Who knew if Lieutenant Speirs would even marry her, Grace had only agreed with that to comfort her, she knew nothing about the man. There were hundreds of girls out there who had been used and discarded by Americans who reeled off cheesy lines like "Gee, you look just like a young Greer Garson."

It made Grace furious just thinking about it. The liberties these men took! Well, no one would do that to her sister, Lillian maybe shy but that was all right because Grace was pushy and she would tell that man exactly what she thought of him. Suddenly she was marching in the direction of the American base.

The American base was really an old manor house which they had infested like rats. It had once been pristine, a perfect example of upper class country living maintained by a fleet of diligent servants. Now the former neatly bordered lines had been churned over by heavy army vehicles, many of the windows were boarded up and rows of sandbags obscured the pretty stone walls. There was a large American flag hanging over the heavy oak door, just in case you forgot where you were. The place was guarded by two lazy sentries but they made no move to stop her as she strode purposefully passed them.

Her first and most serious obstruction was the odious secretary sitting at a desk in the high ceilinged hall. She was dressed in a Women's Army Corp uniform and shuffling papers importantly whilst other men and women in uniform marched around her doing other very important jobs. War was business here.

The woman wasn't pretty, she was too pinched and sour looking to be pretty. One of those people who in civilian life had had an inordinate sense of self-importance and with a uniform had become unbearable. She looked Grace up and down with uncontained distaste, in hindsight perhaps Grace should have worn some shoes rather than the wellingtons she usually wore going about the village.

In order to irritate the woman as much as possible she approached the neatly ordered desk with the widest smile she could spread across her face. 'Good morning!' she said cheerily.

'Morning,' the woman returned, barely looking up from her papers.

'I was wondering if you wouldn't mind helping me,' persevered Grace. 'I'm looking for someone. His name is Lieutenant Speirs.'

'Is it an official visit?' the woman asked doubtfully.

'Yes, yes it is.' The lie wasn't going to stick, Grace could already see her lip curling into a disbelieving sneer. It occurred to Grace that maybe she should have worn her uniform, a set of Lieutenant's pips might have made the woman, who wore the rank of Corporal, a bit more pleasant. 'All right, it's not official but it's very important. I'm sure you'd understand.'

The woman would not understand. Of course she wouldn't, she was determined not to understand. 'Listen, lady do you know how many silly girls like you I get hanging around here chasing up their boyfriends?'

'He's not my boyfriend!'

'Excuse me, is there a problem here, Corporal?' It was Winters' friend, the dark haired one from Sainte-Marie-Du-Mont, Nixon.

'No, sir,' said Corporal Cow. 'I was just explaining to Miss…'

Nixon looked down at Grace with some element of recognition in his eyes. 'It's… uh…'

'Grace,' she inserted. 'It's a short name. It's not hard to remember.'

'Right,' he said apologetically. He looked better than he had done during their first meeting. For one thing his uniform was a lot smarter though the tie was twisted and he looked as if he had a shave. He still looked drained though and she wondered whether this was a permanent feature rather than one brought on only by combat. 'Harry's not here, if that's…'

'Captain…' started the Corporal feeling slightly redundant. She was, however ignored by both Grace and Nixon.

'I'm not looking for Harry. I'm looking for Lieutenant Speirs. Do you know him?'

Nixon's face lit up with obvious amusement though Grace wasn't sure why. 'Oh, I know him. Everyone knows Ron Speirs.'

Grace resisted the urge to tap her foot with impatience. With every passing second she was losing momentum and resolve. Every wasted conversation made this seem like a bad idea. 'Can you take me to him?'

'Uh, sure,' he said uncertainly. 'But Speirs? He's kinda…'

'I'd still like to see him.' And worrying that she had been getting rude she added, 'Please.'

'Sure.'

Much to the annoyance of the scowling WAC woman who had been completely out-ranked, Nixon led Grace into the depths of the not so impenetrable US base. He took her on a winding trail through rows of desks and busy service personnel out into the yard past the stables which had been recreated as barracks for the enlisted men not billeted with local families.

'He's in the Officer's Mess,' directed Nixon, pointing the way. 'I saw him a minute ago.'

'Okay,' she nodded. 'Thank you.'

He looked as if he was going to stop her, maybe grab her arm which would be very forward for a man who struggled to remember her single syllable name. He shook off the action. 'Well, see you around, Grace.' He said the last word triumphantly. 'There, I got it.'

Stepping through the door was like entering a foreign land. It was smoky, untidy, crowded, smelling strongly of whiskey and undeniably masculine. Grace doubted if a woman had ever dared step over the threshold into the world of the 506th's Officers.

She spotted Speirs at a table near the door, head down, deep in quiet conversation with a couple of others. She took a deep breath she approached him.

'Lieutenant Speirs?' She coughed slightly by way of politely making her presence known. The whole table turned to scan her with a languorous, mildly curious gaze as if she were a dog who had learnt to walk on its hind legs. Speirs himself was the last to slowly turn around. He didn't say anything but just the glint of his cold blue eyes made her mouth suddenly very dry. What was she doing? Did she really want her sweet sister with this terrifying man?

She quickly pushed away these feelings. She was here now and she wouldn't back down. 'I'm…'

'I know who you are,' he said calmly.

'Good,' she replied with added force. 'Then you'll want to talk to me outside. In private.'

In different company a pretty young woman demanding to see him alone would have warranted some crude comment but Grace got the feeling that no one was going to dare make jokes at Speirs' expense.

Without any visible signs of confusion he stood, stubbed out his cigarette and followed her outside. He followed her round the manor, walking behind rather than beside her until they were out in the road completely alone.

'You want to talk about you sister.' This was a statement not a question.

'Well, yes, of course,' Grace stuttered. She had been the initiator of the conversation, she had come to see him expecting to have the upper hand yet he had barely said a dozen words and he had established that he was the one in control. 'I wanted to ask you some things.'

'Ask.'

She wasn't sure what she did want to ask him. He was flustering her, making it too difficult to concentrate. 'All right. But you have to tell the truth.'

'I don't lie,' he said. 'I don't see the point.'

'Are you married? In America do you have another family, a wife and kids and a dog and all that?'

'No. That's the truth.'

She believed him. He didn't seem the adulterous type. 'And Lillian, you like her?'

'Yes.' No elaboration but to be honest she wasn't expecting him to regale the beauty of her sister's face or pull out a sonnet he'd written about her.

'Do you love her?'

'I care for her a lot.'

'Not what I asked. Do you love her?'

He nodded. 'She thinks she loves you. She thinks your decent and your kind. She says no one knows you like she does. I don't know much about you so I couldn't say if that were true.'

'Don't you trust her judgement?'

She chose to ignore this question. 'Are you going to marry her?'

'What, now?' he said. 'No. When the war's done, yeah, I was planning on it. You want to ask me about my employability? My financial status? Or are you gonna to leave that to you father?'

Grace smiled slightly, recognising his first joke. It put her at ease and offered her a glimmer of what he must be like with Lillian. She was relieved to see that there something beneath the military uniform that was recognizably human and ordinary. 'Okay, okay. You pass the test. Just. But you know you said that you were going to marry her after the war?'

'Yeah.'

'I would do it in the next few weeks.'

'Why?' He looked confused another sign that he wasn't completely infallible.

'Congratulations, Daddy.'

Speirs' face fell from cool reserve into utter horror in the space of half a second. He looked sick and pale. It was amusing to see the drastic transition. Grace hadn't known how he was going to react and seeing this she began to regret being so blunt with the news.

After a few seconds of recovery Speirs said one word. 'Fuck.'

**A/N: I know I missed out like a whole summer but I wanted to get the plot moving on. Hope this isn't too short and I didn't write Speirs too OOC, he's a tough one. **


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: Based on the mini-series. No offence intended. I own nothing except the stuff that I've made up.**

**A/N: I give you not 1 but 11 Easy Company men in this chapter for your entertainment and enjoyment.**

Grace hadn't spared a thought for Private David Webster since the day he had needed stitches in his arm but the memory of the intelligent man with the startling blue eyes came flooding back to her when she saw him sitting in the corner of the pub. He was an obvious presence being that he was probably the only person who had ever come there to read. He sat in the corner, head bent, eyes intent, completely oblivious to the noise around him.

'What are you staring at?' asked Luz beside her.

'You taken a liking to the college boy?' asked Guarnere, following her line of sight and hitting on Webster's corner.

'No,' Grace insisted, feeling the beginnings of a blush tickling her cheeks.

'Who we staring at?' asked Heffron. He was the new kid, a replacement who talked in the same slightly nasal regional accent as Guarnere. He also seemed to be addressed solely as Babe, Grace had no idea what his real name was.

Luz pointed obviously. 'Webster. Just got transferred in to Easy. He went to Harvard, you know and won't let anybody forget it.'

'What's he like?' asked Grace.

Luz shrugged. 'Who knows.'

'Keeps hisself to hisself,' agreed Guarnere. 'Guess he looks down on us uneducated folk.'

'I'm sure that's not the case,' said Grace, wrenching her eyes away from Webster. If his performance in the Aid Station was anything to go by he was probably aware that they were talking about him. It was best if she went right over and made her presence known.

Grace sat herself at Webster's table. He set down the book and smiled at her. She was right, he had known she was there all along. 'I guess I found you.'

'Isn't this more a case of me finding you?'

He shrugged. 'I knew you were there.'

'I hear you've transferred. H Company getting a bit dreary?'

'I'll say. I'm in the rifle squad now, first scout.' He looked pleased about it.

'Sounds dangerous,' she commented.

'Sounds exciting.'

Grace reached out for his book which lay cast aside. _We Jumped to Fight_ by Lt. Col. Edson D. Raff. 'Topical.'

Webster smiled grimly. 'Dull. The man doesn't know how to sell a story.'

'Snappy title though,' she said. 'What's your book called?'

'It is, as yet untitled. I'm surprised you remembered.'

'Of course I remembered. You had something interesting to say, they don't always.'

'So, I suppose you remember that the last time we met I asked you out.'

Grace nodded. 'Where are you planning on taking me?'

'I don't know, dinner and a movie? Maybe just the movie, the food round here isn't too good.'

'All right,' she said, smiling widely. 'I assume you will be paying. I know all you Yanks are bleeding money.'

'Overpaid, over-sexed and over here,' he joked, repeating the phrase often used by her father and other older members of the community, the American response to it was "underpaid, under-sexed and under Eisenhower". In the right company it would bring laughs, in the wrong atmosphere it could start a fight.

'Outside mine at 7,' Grace instructed.

'Yes, M'am.'

Feeling rather pleased with herself, though already rattling through the logistics of finding a suitable outfit in just a couple of hours, Grace strolled back over to the bar to collect her bag. Luz was looking at her in astonishment.

'What the fuck?' he gasped. 'Did you just ask him out?'

'Maybe,' she answered coyly.

'The college boy. Typical, of all the guys in this regiment you go for the one Ivy League jerk.'

'Don't be jealous, George,' she instructed briskly.

'Of course he's jealous,' snorted Guarnere. 'George can barely read.'

'I can so!'

Grace shook her head and left the boys to their bickering. She had a lot to do if she wanted to be ready for the first real date she'd had in months.

An hour later, while Grace was attempting to find a dress that while not new would have the appearance of being fresh, Vera the Land Girl came barrelling through the bedroom door still dressed in her foul khaki breeches.

'The jig is up,' she declared. 'He found out.'

Grace looked puzzled. 'Who found what?'

'Eugene,' Vera said and when Grace still looked none the wiser she elaborated. 'The American, he's about so high, dark hair, adorable Deep South drawl, the one I lied to about my name.'

'Oh.'

'It was so embarrassing,' moaned Vera, burying her shame beneath a pile of Grace's less well-worn dresses, the kind that had been lingering in the back of the wardrobe since before the war. 'I don't know how he found out where I live but he comes up to the door and starts asking after Maxine. Of course my mother hasn't a clue that that's just my more exotic alias and the horrible truth came out; that I am really just plain boring Vera.'

'I always thought changing your name wasn't one of your brighter ideas,' said Grace. 'He was bound to find out at some point.'

'I just never dreamed that he would be so lovely. He's gorgeous, the accent is just beautiful and he's the kindest, sweetest thing in the world.'

Grace picked up a dress from the discarded pile of outfits and held it against herself, checking her reflection in the narrow mirror. It was a nice shade of navy blue with the outlines of white butterflies. It had been her mother's once upon a time which she had updated by taking in the waist and hitching up the hem line. Flicking it around a bit, the skirt twirled nicely. 'So, you're in love.'

'Of course I'm in love. Completely, hopelessly.' Grace had never seen the poor girl acting quite so dramatically. Vera had always been highly conservative. 'But now he probably won't ever talk to me again because of a stupid lie I never thought I'd have to follow up.'

Grace almost groaned inwardly. She had come to the conclusion that there must be something in the water, why else would it be that everyone but her seemed to be falling in love? It was impossible even to imagine the feeling that Vera or Lillian or Dorothea had spoken about. War was supposed to be romantic yet she had had precious little romance. She was constantly surrounded by handsome men yet she had somehow been left behind.

'Oh, enough of my disastrous life,' Vera sighed. 'Who are you seeing tonight? You're putting an awful lot of effort in.'

The navy dress decided upon, it was time for the make-up. Smoky eyes, arched eyebrows and soft rouge, that's what Marlene Dietrich looked like of the cover of _Photoplay_. That was the look Grace was attempting to pull off. 'His name's David and he's the first one of them to actually ask me out anywhere other than the pub to watch them play darts. I don't know, I think I'm losing my touch.'

'What's he like?'

'I don't know. All right looking definitely, very clever,' she sighed. 'I don't know if I fancy him yet.'

'I fancied Eugene straight off.'

Grace was spared more gushing about Eugene Roe's wonderful qualities by the entrance of her sister. Lillian however, looked furious an emotion Grace wasn't used to seeing marring her sister's usually pretty face.

'What did you do?' Lillian said calmly, suppressed anger almost breaking her gritted teeth.

'About what?' Grace asked knowing that this had to have something to do with Ronald Speirs, everything seemed to.

Vera looked nervously at the two sisters and, tactfully sensing a change in the air stood up and began edging out of the room. 'I'll just leave should I?'

'Uh, yes,' said Grace. 'I'll see you later, V.

She scuttled out of the room, avoiding Lillian's fierce gaze.

'You told him,' Lillian said bitterly. 'I can't believe you told him.'

'About the baby? You weren't going to,' cried Grace. 'I thought I was sparing you an awkward conversation. Is he all right about it?'

'No,' said Lillian. 'He's fucking terrified, what do you think?'

It was the first time Grace had heard her sister swear. It made her feel small like the eight year old girl she had been looking up at her big sister. 'I'm sorry, all right? I didn't mean to…'

'No, it's my problem Grace. I'm sorry I shouted at you but please stay out of my business.'

"_I am always with you. You are both of us. I am both of us. We both are both of us. When you go, I will go with you. Go, so I can go with you. The only way I can go is for you to go, because when you go, I go too, because I am you also. When you go, I will go too, because I am always with you."_

Shrouded by the darkness of the cinema, Webster and Grace simultaneously burst out laughing earning them some glares from quite a few women with tears in their eyes. Grace smothered her own giggling by ramming her fist into her mouth, risking choking. Webster was little better at controlling himself and soon they were falling out of the cinema weeping with laughter.

'Oh, my God,' gasped Webster. 'That was the most ridiculous line of dialogue I've ever heard!'

'I'm definitely not composed enough to be Ingrid Bergman,' agreed Grace. 'Even Gary Cooper couldn't save that line.'

'I don't know, maybe it looks better written down,' commented Webster. 'I don't remember it sounding so melodramatic in the book.'

Their laughter fluttered and died in the quiet night sky. The air was silent as they stepped out of the building. The people of Wiltshire were safely tucked away in their homes, little families gathered around the wireless waiting for the 9 'o clock news. Double Daylight savings meant that even at this time of year the sun was only just beginning to fade leaving the street grey and shadowy. She could just make out Webster's defined features in the diluted light.

'So, what are you doing here?' she blushed. 'I mean most of the enlisted men in your regiment don't even know who Hemmingway is let alone read him. You're educated, you're middle class. You don't have to be here.

He smiled broadly and she sense that she had hit on just the subject he wanted to discuss. 'You'd rather I'd stayed back filing reports in HQ? You sound just like my mom. She says she wants to win the war but she'd rather have anyone but her own son fighting.'

'I didn't mean it like that.'

'I know what you mean,' he said. 'I want to be a writer, you can't write without experiences and who wants to read about the goldbrick who hung back on base whilst everyone else went out to war? Most books written about warfare are about the big picture, the Eisenhowers, the strategies. No one bothers about the enlisted guys because there's been no one to write about them. I can, I'm going to write about the Bill Guarnere's and the George Luz's of this world and there's no other way of doing it besides becoming one of them.'

Grace was warming to his intensity. The pretension was dissipating giving away to a genuine excitement about something he felt passionately about. His whole face was lit up with enthusiasm and his hand gestures were becoming more pronounced. Perhaps this was the first time he had ever really been able to talk about his plans. 'You're prepared to risk you're life for book research?'

'Yeah,' he said slightly bitterly. 'I guess that sounds kinda stupid. But the way I figure it, journalists risk their lives all the time. I mean don't get me wrong, I believe in this war. I hate the Germans as much as the next GI but I'm also here to observe and to chronicle.'

'But you can't,' said Grace. 'You can't not get involved, it isn't human. War isn't a spectator's sport.'

Webster looked thoughtful. 'You're right. That's a good phrase, do you mind if I use it? I'm not completely dead inside. I was scared just like everybody else when we jumped. The guy behind me on the plane was a buddy of mine and I never saw him again. Sometimes I think that maybe I hesitated too long in the door or maybe didn't wait long enough, an extra second either way could have saved him.' He stared up at the grey sky. 'It's still kinda early. Guarnere's holding a craps game, you wanna check it out?'

Grace smiled. Webster was nice company and she didn't feel like leaving him quite yet. 'Yes. Okay, let's go.'

Just as on he first visit, getting into the American base was easy. She and Webster just strolled right in.

The enlisted men's mess was not in the same level of comfort as the Officer's had been but instead a drafty barn where tractors, ploughs and other farming equipment might once have been kept. At full capacity the room could probably squeeze in over 100 hungry, noisy men but now contained only around 10 gathered around a single table. An upbeat Glenn Miller track was playing on a crackling portable gramophone in the corner and the place was strewn with empty bottles of cider giving the scene a friendly if a little rustic feeling. All of the men stared as Grace and Webster entered.

'Hey, fellas,' said Webster cautiously. 'Feel like dealing in a couple of extra players?'

'Well,' said Guarnere, standing as Grace moved further into their circle. 'Seeing as you bring such charming company with you, Web, I don't see why not. Do you play, Grace?'

'Oh, God no,' she answered. 'Nothing more complicated than snap.'

'Then you can sit beside me and be my good luck charm. You know the fellas? You remember Babe here, right. And Luz, of course…' He reeled of a list of names which included a skinny dark man named Liebgott, red-headed Malarkey, Skip Muck and Alex Penkala, Alton More and Johnny Martin. Grace wasn't sure that she'd be able to remember all the names but she nodded all the same. 'Everybody, this is Grace, prettiest nurse in the entire goddamn ETO.'

Grace smiled. 'I'm not going to argue with that.'

'Are we playing or what?' asked Martin.

It was fast paced game mostly involving cheering or groaning whenever a certain number was rolled over two dice. Grace had no idea what was going on as sevens seemed to be both good and bad depending on the order in which they were rolled. This was only one of the many confusing rules which to the others seemed as simple as breathing.

Grace tried to follow Webster's actions as closely as possible, watching the exchange of money travelling in and out of his fingers. He didn't seem to be very good at the game but didn't really to mind. The stakes were low, nothing more than a couple of pounds and half crowns each.

'Here take this, it makes everything a little more fun,' said Muck, handing her a bottle of cider. It looked strangely similar to the stuff that one of the local farmers brewed on the sly in one of the back sheds.

'Did you steal this?' she asked.

'Steal is such a strong word,' insisted Penkala. 'I like to say donated.'

She looked at it dubiously before downing it.

An hour later she was drunk, much to the delight of Easy Company. Normally being treated like a mascot would annoy her but after they'd all had a couple of drinks she was very happy to sit on anybody's lap a cheer them on.

'All right, all right,' she cried loudly. 'Who thinks I look like Ingrid Bergman?'

'I think you're more of a Dietrich,' commented Malarkey.

'Don, you are so perceptive. That was just the look I was going for!'

Malarkey blushed as she rewarded his compliment with a kiss on the cheek.

'Hey, I thought you were Webster's date tonight?' said Liebgott.

'Ah, but Web ain't been too lucky tonight,' teased Luz, eyeing Webster's depleted funds. 'How much have you lost?'

Webster grimaced. 'Enough.'

'Well, if you're done playing you can walk me home,' said Grace grabbing his hand a dragging him towards the door. 'Thank you for having me boys.'

'You're very welcome, Marlene!' Guarnere called after them.

Outside, the darkness of the blackout was complete. The cloudy, smothering sky above left only an inky pool in which to walk in. In London they painted the curbs and tree trucks white so as to prevent accidents but the practice had obviously never been suggested to the Wiltshire County Council. Light was unnecessary though, for the past 5 years Grace had been travelling this blind man's journey and as tipsy as she was she knew the way home.

Grace wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself to keep the chill at bay. She grabbed Webster's arm as they moved closer to the dim silhouette of her home. This biggest trouble with blackout curtains was that it was impossible to tell is anyone was up.

'You should probably stop her,' she told him. 'My dad won't be too impressed with you keeping me out all night.'

In answer, Webster tenderly reached out and pushed away a strand of hair from her eyes. Even in her slightly hazy state Grace could recognize that the gesture was a prelude to something more.

'I guess I'll say good night then,' he murmured.

'Okay, then.'

She tipped her head up expectantly and he did not disappoint. The kiss was the right measure of tenderness and intensity without being too insistent or too deep. Grace broke from their brief clinch with a smile playing across her tingling lips.

'I'll see you around, David.'

**A/N: Thanks to AivieEnchanted and captain ty for the reviews : ) Remember criticisms and suggestions are also more than welcome, all kinds of feedback makes me happy.**

**The film that Grace and Webster went to see was 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'. All right film but the Gary Cooper's stupid speech at the end gets me every time (the only similarity between me and Grace). **


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Just one more Aldbourne chapter I promise. Please don't be angry.**

**Disclaimer: Own nothing. Based on the mini-series. No offence intended.**

_2__nd__ September 1944_

The next morning Grace's head was pounding. Her mouth felt dry and her legs felt like jelly. So this was feeling hung-over. Even stretching an arm out to search the empty bed felt like a huge weight. Peeling an eyelid open she saw that the morning had arrived and that her sister had her head stuck in the wardrobe.

'Lily, what are you doing?' Her voice came out a harsh and unattractive croak.

Lillian jumped back from the wardrobe guiltily. 'Oh, Grace, you're awake. I was looking for your white dress, the chiffon one. Can I borrow it?'

Grace closed her eyes again, desperate to block out the blinding sun. 'It's in my room.'

'And your lipstick?'

'Just take it,' Grace moaned before falling back into a heavy sleep.

'Grace. Grace.'

She mentally she tried to push away the unfamiliar voice that was gnawing on her sleeping consciousness. Physically she batted away the insistent hand that continued tentatively nudging her. 'Oh, sod off, will you?'

'Can't, sorry.'

For the second time that morning Grace opened her dry, sleepy eyes. The sun was brighter suggesting that some hours had passed since Lillian had woken her up. She was also staring into the face of Captain Nixon.

'What the hell are you doing in my bedroom?' Very suddenly she was awake and sitting up, jerking the covers over her lacy pink slip. Nixon lunged back looking a little less confident than he had on the occasions of their previous meetings. 'Did my mum let you in?'

'Uh, no, not exactly. The door was open. No one's home,' Nixon said. He ran his hands through his slicked dark hair distractedly.

Grace remembered, her parents were in Canterbury for the day visiting an aunt. That didn't explain why Lillian wasn't down stairs minding the shop. It also didn't explain why a strange man had invited himself into her bedroom. 'What are you doing here?'

'You don't have a telephone.'

'I know. What would you need to telephone me about? Look, sorry but if this is so urgent that you need to break into my house can you please just spit it out?' It was a bit ruder than she normally would have put it but she still felt half-asleep.

'You do know that Speirs and your sister are getting married today, right? I saw them heading down to the church.'

She froze. How had she not guessed? It had been her idea after all. Maybe because she had never expected Lillian to be so devious or to hold a grudge like this. Grace understood that she was angry but to not tell a secret like this was just cruel. 'Oh my God. The dress!'

'What?' asked Nixon looking confused.

'She borrowed my white dress this morning. She can't get married in that! I haven't it worn since I was 16.'

He looked at her as if she were crazy. 'We can catch up with them if you want to stop them.'

Grace frowned. 'Why would I want to stop them? Because of the dress?'

'Uh, because it's Speirs. I mean he's a great guy, good soldier but I wouldn't want him marrying my sister.'

She climbed out of bed, sitting down was making her feel vulnerable, and reached for her dressing gown which she quickly wrapped around herself. 'Well, it's a good thing it wasn't your sister he picked. Fancy going to a wedding?'

It took a while for Grace to get her act together. Finding a dress, last night's one smelt of cigarettes and alcohol, shoes, her hair, it was a wedding after all. Nixon was getting impatient with her, tapping his foot and sighing loudly so she set him into her parent's room to fetch the camera. She didn't believe that a day like this should go undocumented.

Finally, they dashed to the church in the centre of the village, Grace slipping around in her too high heels, Nixon slowing down every so often to allow her to catch up. They raced through the cemetery, dodging crookedly spaced gravestones and made their final sprint towards the door.

The vicar was already there, leaning against the rough grey stone. He was smoking, an act which looked rather incongruous on a middle aged man dressed in a dog collar. He waved to them as they arrived, breathless.

'Two weddings in one day, is it?' he asked cheerfully. 'It's the war, you know, puts young people in such a hurry to take their vows.'

'No, no,' spluttered Grace. 'We're not here to get married. We just want to watch. It hasn't finished yet, has it?'

'Not started, dear. You're just in time,' he said. 'I was just taking a fag break. I always imagined God being a non-smoker.'

Grace felt Nixon behind her shaking with a burst of silent laughter at this image. She thanked the Vicar and grabbed Nixon's arm and dragged him into the cool church. Lillian and Speirs looked up as they entered, like guilty school children sitting at the front pew.

'For Christ sake,' muttered Speirs. 'What are you doing here, Nixon?'

'Oh, I just came along for the ride,' answered Nixon. 'Hope you don't mind me crashing your big day.'

'Look, Grace,' Lillian said, standing up agitatedly. 'I'm sorry, I didn't tell you but we wanted to do this quietly. I really couldn't stand a fuss.'

'What fuss?' said Grace. 'There's really no fuss. We'll just sit quietly at the back, we won't say a word.'

The Vicar entered, jogging up to the altar and slicking back his untidy hair. 'Are we ready?' he asked.

'Fine, you can stay,' said Lillian with a sigh and Grace couldn't resist the urge to hug her.

What followed was the bones of a wedding ceremony. It was as short and too the point as possible with none of the celebratory elements that Grace associated with the few weddings she had been to. At least the dress was white, and borrowed. The shoes were a new pair and blue. This at least satisfied Grace's needed for tradition; something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

It was sad that the only other person to witness the event was practically a stranger. Nixon spent much of the 15 minute ceremony flicking through the hymn books arranged on the pews. This got so irritating that after a few minutes Grace had to snatch the book from his hands and scald him with a reprimanding look as a mother would to a fidgeting child.

Once the ceremony was over and the Vicar had disappeared into the back of the church, perhaps for another cigarette break, maybe to the pub, Grace insisted on a photograph. Speirs did not look impressed.

'No,' he said firmly.

'Yes,' answered Grace with just as much force. 'Do you honestly think my mum is ever going to forgive you if there isn't even one photograph? She's your mother-in-law.'

'I don't photograph well.'

Lillian touched his arm soothingly. 'Let's just do it, Ron.'

He hesitated for a moment before grudgingly agreeing though he didn't smile. Nixon, on the other hand seemed to find the whole thing terribly amusing.

Finally, Grace and Nixon removed from their presence from the happy couple, opting to walk back to the Post Office leaving the newly weds to themselves.

It really was a beautiful day so beautiful that to Grace to seemed as if it had always been intended that this would be Lillian's day. The fact that there were no flowers or hymns or church bells or even anyone there to celebrate it was, she now realised quintessentially Lillian. She hated being the centre of attention, the thought of half the village watching her walk down the aisle probably made her feel sick. Thinking about it, Lillian had possible not enjoyed her first wedding day as much as everyone had assumed precisely because of this.

Walking back home with Captain Nixon was a little bit of anti-climax to the event especially as he was acting so disgruntled. 'I hate weddings,' he said finally after kicking a few pebbles across the church's gravelled drive way.

'Really? I love them. The dress, the flowers, everything. Well, everything that wasn't in Lillian's wedding.'

'Yeah, that's all great, I guess but what about the statement it makes? Spending the rest of your life with one person, not even looking at anyone else, it doesn't sound right.'

'The idea is that when you're with the right person you're not supposed to want to look at anyone else.'

There was a long pause as Nixon dug his hands even deeper into his pockets. 'I'm married,' he announced finally.

'Poor Mrs Nixon.'

He laughed at that before changing the subject to safer territory. 'Aren't you supposed to be fed at these things? I'm starving.'

'I could make you a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich,' she offered.

'A bacon sandwich,' he nodded. 'That sounds good.'

When she let him in, the house was just as she had left it right down to the hairbrush she had thrown down on the sofa before dashing out. That hairbrush belonged to another time. Her sister was married now, what would that mean? She couldn't imagine Lieutenant Speirs ever settling down in sleepy Aldbourne after the war, which would suggest that Lillian would be moving to America with him. Equally it was impossible to picture home loving Lillian being so far away.

These were issues that would be bridged later, really they weren't even Grace's to worry about. Right now she had a hungry Yank prowling around her living room. 'The kitchen's through here,' she called.

'Uh huh,' he said. His fingers were trailing unabashedly and indiscriminately over the various pieces of family bric-a-brac that littered the room. He picked up the framed photo of Robbie. 'Who's this?'

'My brother,' she answered, quickly snatching it from his hands and returning it to it's rightful place, her mother would know if anybody had touched it. 'He's away in Selsey right now.'

'Oh. I thought he might be dead, you know the way everything's arranged around him. Kinda like a shrine.'

'He's not. We just haven't seen him in a while.'

The statement sunk into silence and echoed. When she talked about him it felt is if he were dead, only because the family rarely ever spoke about him outside of the home. Grace didn't want to start baring her worries about Robbie, especially with Lewis Nixon.

He seemed to sense that and yet again founding himself steering away from a potentially dangerous topic. 'So, where's this sandwich you promised me?'

Grace breathed a sigh of relief and led him into the kitchen. 'Weren't you Yanks told not to eat all our rations? We only get 4 ounces of bacon a week.'

'Do you mind?'

'No,' she said. 'I hate bacon.'

He watched her pull out the frying pan with a clatter, before disappearing into the larder and fetching the ingredients.

'You know, I've never had a bacon sandwich,' he commented.

'Don't sound so deprived.'

'I wasn't deprived. I'm rich or at least my family is. Really rich.'

'Oh.' There wasn't really much else to say, he didn't sound like he was showing off merely stating a fact.

When the bacon began to crisp she flipped it between to slices of bread and cut in half just as her mother used to do for her and her siblings before it was finally revealed that Grace couldn't stand bacon.

Nixon munched thoughtfully. 'You're right, I have been missing out,' he said with his mouth full. 'I really fucking love bacon sandwich.'

There was a dull rap at the back door, interrupting Nixon further delighting in the new found glory of the bacon sandwich. Grace, with a sudden sense of foreboding opened the door. The foreboding was further heightened by the sight of a telegraph boy nervously scuffing his boots on the doorstep. It was a job no one envied. People called these boys the "Angels of Death" because more often than not the visits brought news announcing "deepest sympathies" and "killed in action".

He offered her the telegram in silence and she took it without saying a word. As she opened it she was suddenly unaware of Captain Nixon sitting at her kitchen table, it was just her and the letter and the boy watching her apprehensively.

'I'm very sorry,' offered the boy pre-emptively.

Grace shook her head. 'Don't worry, it's not bad news.'

The tension evaporated instantly as if it had never been there. The boy was clearly relieved and the reason became clear when he extend his hand for a tip. Obviously grieving widows weren't the best tippers. Nixon handed her a couple of shillings which she dropped into the boy's hand. He docked his cap and disappeared, off to deliver some bad news to some unsuspecting woman.

'What is it?' asked Nixon.

'I'm being called back,' she said, still scanning through the telegram.

'I thought you said it wasn't bad news.'

'I know. It could be worse though.' She looked up at him searchingly. 'Something's going to happen, isn't it? They're planning something.'

Nixon nodded. 'Yes.'

'Do you know?'

'Not the details. Not yet.'

Grace read through the telegram once more before folding it neatly and tucking it into her pocket. She sensed that as bad as things had been the first time around it was only going to get worse and the thought terrified her.

**A/N: Not entirely pleased with that chapter as it's gone through a few rewrites and is drastically different to the way I originally imagined it. Anyway, now that's out of the way we can get back to all that fun war stuff you all seem to be desperate for! Thanks for the reviews, they keep me writing.**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Kind of regretting being a bit slow on this Chapter as I've just missed the 65****th**** Anniversary of Operation Market Garden which would have been fitting. Anyway, just so you know every piece of information in this chapter had been thoroughly (I lie) researched using wikipeida and "A Bridge Too Far".**

**Disclaimer: Own nothing. Based on the mini-series. No offence intended.**

19th September 1944

'Have you done the penicillin rounds?'

'Uh, yeah. Just a couple of hours ago.'

Grace sighed exasperatedly. 'And in a minute you'll have to do it again. Remember penicillin must be administered every three hours.'

She felt the needed to sigh again but felt that maybe that would be melodramatic. Instead she marched busily up the crowded ward, her ever eager charge bobbing alongside like an excitable Labrador. Her name was Alison Chambers, or Al or Ally as she liked to be called, on loan from the American Red Cross and current thorn in Grace's side. The girl was desperate for some experience but why did it have to be during the biggest airborne operation in the history of warfare? Grace understood why Matron had placed Alison under her tutelage; in the hope that maybe having to care for someone even more vapid and silly than herself would bring out her mature side and while that maybe the case, the role of mentor was fast becoming tiring.

Grace stopped suddenly only for the comedy value of having Ally run straight into her in classic Laurel and Hardy fashion. 'Anything else, Sister Chambers?'

'Yeah. You said to empty the bed pans, what should I do with the uh… contents?'

'Sling it in the street.'

Ally looked horrified and not a little sickened. 'Isn't that kinda primitive?'

'Get used to it.'

Holland was even worse than France. It was hard to imagine that only two weeks ago she had been back home saying goodbye to her family. Her mother had been furious when she had discovered that Lillian had married without her though the news of an impending grandchild went someone way to healing the hurt. She was still far from impressed with Speirs as a son-in-law. This had made her over emotional when Grace had broken the news that she was leaving again. There had been tears and if Grace's mother had known what it would be like in Holland she would never have let her daughter go.

They had set up shop in an abandoned school on the outskirts Nijmegen, a town between Eindhoven and Arnhem, closer to the line than they had ever been before. In fact here there was no line. Troops pushed forward and retreated backwards all along the Rhine and its distributaries trying to capture those elusive bridges that would apparently end the war. Fog in Britain meant that there was practically no air support or re-supply and as Infantry units failed to take their assigned bridges from unexpected enemy forces, the Armoured Units were stuck with nowhere to go. Even Grace could tell that something had gone desperately wrong.

Primitive did not even describe the circumstances in which they were operating. The school had already taken a considerable pounding by German Artillery from across the River Waal. The glass in the windows had been shattered and replaced with cardboard and while that was good for blackout purposes they didn't keep out the cold out at night, luckily the days were warm for the time of year. Finally, as a gruesome testament to the horror that went on inside the walls, the Red Cross hanging out of the window had been painted with a mixture of blood and raspberry jam.

'Oh, Ally,' she called after the American girl. 'Remember to stay on the West side of the street; artillery can be a problem on the river side.'

Grace's attention was grabbed by a sudden commotion at the school's back door. A crowd of Dutch civilians, yelling and crying in their own language, there were so many of them it was difficult to know what the source of their distress was. She felt sick when she found out.

A small child, about five or six, skinny legs sticking out of corduroy shorts lying motionless in his father's arms. The mother was crying beside him, wringing her hands. Grace shivered. Since arriving in Holland 2 days ago she had learnt that the only thing worse than the sound of a soldier crying for his mother, was a mother crying for her child.

Matron quickly took charge with Grace assisting. The little boy had been shot, probably by a sniper which meant that the family had travelled all across Nijmegen just to get here. Luckily it was a ricochet but the boy was still tiny and the bullet fragments had shattered several ribs.

'Sister Barnes,' said Matron calmly. 'Tell the family we are doing all we can but they need to leave.'

'I don't speak Dutch.'

'Just say it. They'll understand. Then fetch Doctor Phillips.'

Grace did so, speaking slowly but it turned out that the Dutch people spoke very good English though with a strange accent. They seemed to calm down after some gentle explaining though the mother was still crying. Grace wished she could stay and comfort them but knew that behaviour like that would be no good to the child. Moving further into the building she sought out the classroom which they had converted into a makeshift operating theatre with transportable generators they had bought with them from France. She ran smack into Doctor Phillips.

He looked tired to the point of falling asleep standing up and his smock was so spattered in blood it was hard to find any patch that was it's original white.

'What is it, Barnes?' he asked weakly, with no of his usual officious force. 'I'm just about to take a break.'

'Matron wants you on the wards.'

He exhaled heavily. 'I suppose I shouldn't keep her waiting. You might as well take that break for me. Just a short one, mind. We've got some chaps coming in from Arnhem; apparently it's getting a little sticky down there.'

Sticky, a classic British understatement. Grace thanked him. She sat down in the empty corridor, taking the weight off her feet for the first time in what felt like a year but had in reality only been two days.

After a few minutes she got to her feet again and entering the wards there had been a drastic surge in the number of bodies filling the room, a fair amount of them baring the Screaming Eagle. The 101st were in town.

'I like the Dutch,' pronounced a voice behind her. She whirled around to discover that Webster had snuck up on her, something which was not hard to do being as she was in a constant daze.

'Oh, really?' She said, exhaustion seeping through her voice.

'Yeah. They seem so much more pro-active than the French. Or even the British they just sit around fucking drinking tea or whatever.'

'And unnecessary activity is such an American trait.' Exhaustion was making her snappish and irritable.

'All I'm saying is that they're different from the French,' he continued either ignoring or unaware of her prickly response. She suspected unaware, in the short time she had known Webster he struck her as a little emotionally insensitive. 'The French did nothing but sit around feeling apathetic. The French Resistance was a joke, I didn't even see the French Resistance and the British are acting like the war's over, wandering around like everything's normal.'

'You're very quick to judge.'

'Well, look at the welcome we got. In France they hated us.'

'Put yourselves in their shoes for a second, David. In 1914 their country was destroyed. They get their lives together, they rebuild their homes and their farms only for the next generation to go through exactly the same thing. You can understand why they don't feel like throwing you a party straight away. And what you said about the British, it's called cultural differences. We carry on like nothing's wrong because that's the only way we can. Remember, we've been at war for 5 years now, we know a little bit about it.'

There was a sudden crash from the foyer sparing Webster the need for responding and excusing Grace from an apology for her unnecessary outburst.

'Wait here,' she told him before darting off in the direction of the disturbance.

Nixon was lying slumped against the door, getting in everyone's way, Welsh was beside him laughing hysterically. It was inappropriate behaviour which Matron had picked up on straight away. She advanced on them with the anger and ferocity of a convoy of Panzers. The laughter wilted and died as she approached.

'Well, I never!' she bellowed. 'This kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable, especially in a hospital and especially from Officers. I don't know how you're expected to behave in the American army but the British expect their leaders to set an example! Now if you are injured kindly waited patiently and quietly, if you are not, get out.'

Grace over to defend the two men. She didn't feel much like it, Nixon at least was very drunk. 'Matron, I'll see to them. I'm not busy.'

Matron nodded curtly and left her to Welsh and Nixon.

'Are you hurt?' she asked them.

'Just my dignity,' answered Welsh standing up and brushing down his filthy uniform. 'Jesus Christ, I haven't been yelled at like that since grade school.'

'What are you doing here? Have you been drinking?'

'No,' said Welsh. 'Well, he has. I'm as sober as nun.'

'Though I have met some nuns…' Nixon slurred. He seemed unhurt apart from a gash like a burn or a graze scraped across his forehead.

'Is your head all right?' she asked.

'Oh, there's a story!' said Nixon.

'There is?'

He dropped his helmet into her hands. It took her a moment to realise that there was a bullet hole through the centre corresponding with the graze on his forehead, there was an exit hole through the side. Grace frowned, 'How?'

'That, my friend is divine intervention.'

'Oh, please don't tell me you've found God.'

He snorted derisively. 'Yeah, right. That shot was a warning shot. Fate's got it coming to me.'

'What's he been drinking?' Grace asked Welsh.

'Liberated schnapps chased down with some of the good ol' Vat 69,' he answered with a grin.

'I don't know what that means,' she snapped impatiently. 'But you should probably go a find some coffee. And keep out of Matron's way.'

They nodded solemnly, Nixon slightly less sincerely. Grace was too tired to deal with their childish behaviour now, in fact she would be happy if she never saw another arrogant American Paratrooper again. Unfortunately, she had barely drawn breath before she was faced with another. Fortunately, that paratrooper was Dick Winters.

Tall, steady, quiet and dignified, he was stood in the middle of the hospital like the eye of the storm, unfazed by the chaos around him. He looked at her with polite concern in his eyes.

'I hope these two haven't been causing too much trouble,' said Winters, genuinely apologetic.

'They haven't been here long enough to cause any lasting damage,' she answered. His presence was calming and she found the tension dissipating from her body in the face of his steadying authority. 'How are you?'

'I'm fine, I guess. We tried to take Nuenen.'

'And how'd that work out for you?'

He grimaced resentfully; he was obviously taking defeat personally. 'Not so great. I'm looking for Sergeant Randleman.'

'Randleman? I haven't come across him but I'll ask around.'

Grace led Winters through the claustrophobic labyrinth of wounds. There weren't enough beds so civilians and servicemen alike were forced to lay slumped in corners and against walls, those who had the energy to stand did clutching bloodied bandages to shattered limbs. These were the walking wounded, the responsibility of Grace and the other triage nurses. They all needed patching up and seeing on their way whilst the Doctors and surgical nurses focused on the more life threatening injuries.

'There he is,' said Winters. He led her over to a giant hulk of a man. Like a man used to manual labour he had strong arms and broad shoulders, one of which was being swabbed in surgical ethanol by a harassed looking Maggie.

'How are you doing, Bull?'

'Fine, Cap. Though I don't even need to be here. It ain't nuthin' more than a scratch.'

'Just humour me,' said Winters dryly.

'Well, I can't say I'm not enjoying the company.' Randleman nodded at Maggie who, even with blood staining her hair and dark tired rings circling her eyes was probably the closest thing to movie star good looks these boys had ever seen.

She was having none of it. In response she pressed hard on the wound with the stinging alcohol, making him wince. 'Don't flirt,' she snapped. 'I don't have time for it.'

Grace interrupted. 'Maggie, why don't I take over? I need you to check up on Ally. I haven't seen her in a while and you know she can't be left on her own for too long.'

Maggie sighed and left grumbling and Grace felt slightly guilty for inflicting this on poor Ally, who Maggie had absolutely no time for.

Randleman looked her up and down and smiled genially. He was nearly twice the size of her but she wasn't intimidated by him as he was clearly friendly. 'Well, gee Sister back where I come from we've got fair size squirrels bigger'n you.'

'Randleman's our hero of the hour,' Winters told her. 'He spent the night behind enemy lines. We'd all given him up for dead.'

'I ain't no hero, sir,' Randelman insisted, and Grace caught embarrassment in his voice. 'I didn't save nothing but my own sorry behind.'

'We're heading back in Eindhoven in about half an hour.' Winters clapped him on his uninjured shoulder. 'Hang tough. You too, Grace.'

Randleman didn't take too long to deal with. He had been right, it was just a scratch. With the offending piece of tank shrapnel already moved there wasn't really much she needed to do that couldn't be done by a Company medic. The only worrying thing was that someone seemed to have dug around in there with a rusty bayonet, hence the needed for antiseptic alcohol.

He was up a ready to go in time for his outfits moving orders, generally fine though he couldn't raise his arm above his head. There was no space to keep him here and she suspected that even if she had of suggested it he would have refused.

Just as Randleman and his unit were trickling out of the hospital they were being replaced by another wave of wounded 82nd men and Grenadier Guards infantry who were still attempting to seize the Nijmegen Bridge across town. Grace closed her eyes for a few seconds. She needed just the few seconds to regroup her thoughts before picking up and starting again. She opened them to find Webster still waiting exactly where she told him to wait. He looked none the worse for her telling off. She suspected that criticism rolled off him like water off a duck.

'You're still here,' she smiled, relieved. 'Aren't you supposed to be going somewhere?'

'I want to apologise,' said Webster clearly. 'What I said was insensitive.'

'Oh, no!' she cried. 'I was getting angry and everything was going so badly. I'm sorry I was so snappish.'

'I guess I should try being less…'

'Self-absorbed?' she offered but quickly covered the mouth that let the word slip.

Luckily, he didn't seem to be in the mood to take offence. 'Hey, I'm honest about my own short-comings. And I've been thinking and you're right about knowing war. And we're all wrong to want to end this war quickly. Jumping into Berlin would be too sudden and a mistake. Germany needs to know war like France and Britain. We need to bring the war they started into their homes and farms. We have to kill their spirit for it, otherwise we'll be looking at a third war.'

Grace smiled. There was his passion, exciting and fiery. With that passion she could ignore the egotism that came with his intelligence, that passion drew her like a moth to a flame.

'What are you smiling about?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing.'

**A/N: Just to warn you all that updates may slow down a bit as I'm getting busy with school stuff but I promise that it will never be more than 5/6 days. That is my solemn promise and you have my permission to hunt me down if I do not keep my word. : )**


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: I don't own Band of Brothers. This is mini-series based.**

6th October 1944

So, Market Garden had gone wrong and three weeks later they were still in Holland, stuck on the wrong side of the Rhine. The war had stagnated and the murkiest, darkest hole in Europe was suddenly a 5 kilometre wide stretch of land called The Island, trapped between the Lower Rhine and the Waal. The nurses had quickly been moved further South as everything had started to go tits up in Nijmegen, the city currently marked the East most point of the Allied advance. The Germans held territory North and West as far as Opheusden making the Units on The Island all but surrounded but for a very small retreating space to the South.

The period was a slow one for nursing. The war had gone back in time, the Germans had dug their trenches, the British and Americans were hunkering down in theirs, each supported by British artillery in the rear. They were fighting the war the way their parents had fought almost two decades ago and it was immeasurably dull for the girls in the rear just waiting for something to happen.

Talk inevitably turned to men. Dorothea had not stopped talking about her new fiancee, the exact details of the proposal, the ring she was yet to receive, ever since they had arrived in Holland. The other girls were tired of it but in Ally, the new American nurse she found a new captivated audience.

'He's a paratrooper himself,' she said proudly, with that disgusting in love smile that everyone pretended to distain but were really just jealous of. 'A British paratrooper in the 6th Airborne.'

'Is he here now?' asked Ally.

'Oh, no. He's back in England. His division wasn't involved in Market Garden and he was wounded in Normandy, not seriously. Anyway, Malcolm and I are going to marry as soon as we're in the country at the same time.'

'So, Alison…' said Maggie pouncing on the new girl.

'Oh, Ally, please. Ain't nobody but my mother calls me Alison.'

'Well, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for your mother. Do you have a young man? Any handsome American waiting for you?'

Ally laughed. Just like everything about her the laugh was sweet and innocent, she seemed a lot younger than her 20 years. 'Oh, Gee no! My daddy wouldn't let any boy within 20 yards of my front door.'

'But he let you come to Europe?'

'Yeah, he's funny like that,' she shrugged. 'He said I needed the culture.'

This prompted everyone to laugh. Sitting in a bombed in school in Holland they could see precious little culture. Obviously no one had told Ally's father that the old Europe of museums, art galleries and operas was dead and unlikely to be resuscitated any time soon.

'How's it going with your American?' Dorothea asked Grace.

'What American?' she answered, faux innocent. Even so there wasn't much to say about Webster, one kiss did not constitute a possessive pronoun.

'The ever so handsome blue eyed Adonis.'

That wasn't how Grace would have described him. 'David. It's died. I haven't seen him in about 3 weeks and besides even if he did walk in today I really don't think I'd have the time for anything like that.'

'Quite right,' pronounced Maggie. 'You don't want to be tying yourself down to anyone, I don't care how blue his eyes are.'

Matron strode in, her greying hair sweeping in tendrils over her red and sweating face. 'No time to sit around, girls, it's about to get very warm in here.'

'What's happening?' asked Dorothea.

'Jerry's broken through Opheusden. Everything's a bit of a shambles. Major Horton's been killed and no one knows what they're doing. I've been told to expect quite a few casualties.'

'What can I do?' asked Ally eagerly.

'You, Chambers,' scorned Maggie. 'Can go play char-wallah.'

'What?'

'Make the tea.'

Alison stood her ground. She shook her strawberry blonde curls and while the look of steady determination was somewhat lessened by the childish smattering of freckles across her button nose it was clear that she would not be swayed. 'Now look here. I'm a nurse just as good as the rest of you. Just cause I ain't been in no wars or nothing doesn't mean I can't take care of people like I've been trained. Tell me what needs doin'.'

Maggie look shocked but Matron seemed to appreciate the outburst. She appraised the youngest member of her team with a quick flick of her beady eyes. 'You can assist me today, Sister Chambers.'

Grace groaned. That had been her job. 'But…'

'You can run over to one of the Regimental Aid Stations,' instructed Matron. 'See how they're doing for supplies and see if they need any help.'

'Don't know why they sent you,' grumbled the grumpy looking American medic, who looked at her through half-closed eyes not even bothering to get up from his chair. A cigarette hung lazily from the corner of his mouth building up ash. 'It's quiet as the grave out here. Some of the natives are saying they've got a Brit dying up in one of their farmhouses. I sent some guys to go check it out.'

'Well, I'll just wait then,' she said pompously, shooting him one of her most condescending looks. He didn't see it, his eyes were already closed in preparation for a long doze.

'You do that.'

It seemed then man had made quite a home for himself in the red bricked school house turned Regimental Aid Station. He had a small gas stove brewing grainy erstaz coffee, where he had got it she didn't know, as far as she was aware their were only British rations available on The Island and they did not contain coffee. On one of the small children's desks were a couple of blankets made into a bed. He had obviously been here a while.

The whole of the area had been completely evacuated of civillians, no mean feat in such a densely packed area like Holland and the streets were given an eerie ghost town feel that even inside could not be supressed. The ghosts of little Dutch children sat at the desks which were ready to be used as operating tables at a moments notice.

They sat there in awkward silence for at least ten minutes. It was a silence broken only when rocking on his chair the stuck-up medic lost his balance and had to grab the edge of the desk to keep from falling over. She disliked him so much she didn't even hid her snort of ridicule.

Before the wounded British man could arrive, two stretcher bearers and an American surgeon decorated as a Major burst in carrying a Dutch civilian dressed in a dusty black suit. The man's bloodless white face contrasted starkly with his dark hair and clothes and the small, feeble moans he was admitting made Grace uncertain about his recovery. The quiet ones were the ones to worry about.

'Who are you?' snapped the Major bluntly.

'Sister Barnes,' she answered, she left off the "sir" he was American, she wasn't required to show any deference to him. 'They sent me over from the Clearing Station to lend a hand.'

'Well, we could use a hand now.' They heaved the man's body onto the teacher's desk beneath the blackboard. Around the blackboard, she noticed remained brightly coloured children's drawings, one marred by a large, red hand print.

'What happened?' she asked.

'He refused the evacuate, apparently. Got caught up in the shelling in Randwijk. It looks like a skull fracture but we can't move him any further back to a proper operating theatre, moving him 150 yards off the line almost killed him.'

Grace dashed into the store room to collect a bottle of dried plasma, when mixed with distilled water it would be ready to use like an ordinary blood transfusion. The room the boxes of plasma were kept in was cool, she could imagine it as it had once been, full of pencils and books for Dutch children. All of that had now been looted or burnt when British and American forces had moved in.

As quick as she could she darted back into the main class room but it was already too late. She could hear his death rattle, breath bubbling over blood. The man twitched one final time before laying still.

The Major stood up and wiped his bloodied hands. 'Get rid of the body,' he said simply to the Medic who had not moved the whole time before marching into the back rooms in distraction.

A jeep pulled up outside and the quiet in the room was disturbed by the noise of the stretcher bearers returned from the Dutch farmhouse. In a moment of amazing coincidence the man they had found was not a British soldier but and American trooper, an American trooper named David Webster. He was sitting upright and while filthy and bleeding he didn't look any the worse for the wounded leg he was gripping.

'Talk of the Devil,' she muttered and greeted him with a smile.

'Well, isn't this a surprise, Sister Barnes.' The stretcher bearers lowered him to the ground and he hobbled himself over to one of the tiny desks.

'How does it feel being mistake for a Limey?' she asked with a grin.

'The least of my worries,' he answered.

'How are things back there?'

'A goddamn mess. We're just sitting in our trenches watching artillery shooting over our heads. You seen that movie, _All Quiet on the Western Front_? It's like that. And it isn't going to end any time soon. They're well supplied, it's only a few miles up into Germany. In fact they're so well supplied they don't think anything of firing their 88s on one wounded guy struggling across a field.'

'Can I look at the leg?'

'Oh, yeah sure. I don't think it's bad but it hurts like a good goddamn.'

It was a clean wound a sharp entrance through the base of the calf and an exit wound about half way up the leg. It had avoided any muscle damage and the bone was virtually untouched. It was a one in a million wound and she told him so.

He grinned happily. 'Someone up there likes me.'

'That's someone at least.' A skinny dark man Grace recognized from Bill Guarnere's craps game had entered. He had apparently walked all the way from the line as they hadn't heard a jeep pull up. He was just as ingrained with dirt as Webster, it looked as if the two of them had been rolling in a pig sty, and an equally disgusting handkerchief was binding a profusely bleeding neck.

'Hey, Joe!' called Webster. 'You getting out of this dump?'

Joe Liebgott shook his head despondently, scratching his wounded neck. 'Nah. It's nuthin'. What you got there, Web?'

'This here is a million dollar wound,' Webster answered proudly, looking down at his leg with affection. 'Minimal damage, maximum escape power.'

'Beautiful. Some guys get all the fucking luck.'

'Do you want me to look at that, or are you just going to scratch?' asked Grace, attempting peel away the scrap of handkerchief.

'Hey, don't I know you?' Liebgott frowned. 'Oh, yeah. It's Marlene Dietrich. How you doing Marlene?'

Grace blushed, it wasn't helping her professional attitude. 'You remember that?'

'Hell yeah. Don't see too many dames around about barracks. Most like you take them some place fancy.'

She glanced at Webster mischievously. 'What can I say? I'm a cheap date.'

'Or maybe Webster's just cheap.' Liebgott winced as she cleaned his wound with the same bloodied water she had used for Webster's leg. With everything wiped clean she could see that the bullet had only grazed his neck on it's way past but even an inch to the left could have left him choking on his own blood. One glance at Liebgott's impertinent smile shook those morbid thoughts out her head. It was impossible to imagine his animated face as anything other than alive. 'How about I take you to Paris, huh? Show you a real nice time.'

'Do you remember my real name?'

He shrugged. 'I like Marlene.'

'It's Grace,' said Webster pointedly.

'That's pretty too.' He shifted away from her touch as she retied her own fresh handkerchief around his neck, covering a layer of sulfa powder. It made him look rather rakish, more like a fashion accessory than a bandage. 'Anyway, I gotta get going. Captain Winters will be wanting a report on those Kraut prisoners. You won't believe want that sonofabitch made me do. Ah, never mind, I'll tell you later.'

'Quite a bit later,' said Webster, indicating the leg.

'Yeah. See you around, Web. And maybe I'll see you later, Marlene.' He winked and sauntered out, his rifle slung casually over his shoulder.

'He's a bit of a character,' she said a few moments after he left.

Webster nodded fondly. 'Yep. They all are.'

'What about Winters? Is he a good officer? Liebgott seemed a bit…'

'It doesn't take much to piss Joe off. Winters is a good Officer, better than most. Most are arrogant jerks to begin with, give them some stripes and they get drunk on power. Captain Winters isn't like that. He won't ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself.'

'Well, don't hold me to it but I don't think he's going to be Captain Winters for long.' He frowned. 'Major Horton's dead, at the Opheusden railway. He's your Battalion Executive Officer, isn't he?'

Webster nodded. 'And who'd be next in line to the throne?'

'Winters.'

'No shit.'

They fell into thoughtful silence as she cleared away his old bandages. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall. She thought he had fallen asleep but he didn't look peaceful, a small frown wrinkled his forehead. Suddenly, he spoke. 'I guess I'll be gone for quite a while.'

'A few weeks,' she agreed.

'I'll be staying out of this as long as I can. I can't take it any more.'

She knelt beside him and took his hand. His voice was cracking as he spoke and she sensed that he was fighting tears. It scared her. 'We all feel like that.'

'I know. Will you write to me when I'm in the hospital? I need someone to keep me up on everything that's going on with this crazy outfit.'

'Of course.'

The was a rumble of a parking jeep outside, breaking their moment. Grace slipped her hands from his and shook her head slightly to clear the thoughts that were fogging her senses. 'I'll go see if they can take you back to the Evacuation point.'

At the door she met Eugene Roe, one half of a stretcher carrying a man lying on his front, bleeding from the back.

'It's pretty serious,' he drawled. 'You got a surgeon in here?'

'Yeah. He's in the back. Where's you driver going next?'

'Anywhere you want me to go, baby,' called said Driver with a wink.

'All right, take him to the Evacuation Point.' She nodded at Webster who was struggling to his feet. 'Don't let him walk.'

She didn't say anything else to David as he exited, leaning on the Jeep Driver's shoulder. He waved and she smiled weakly back. She was sure that she was going to miss him, just talking to him, but she had more important things to worry about. Her job was more important than a man. That thought made her laugh, less than a year ago she would have been flirting and dancing with the rest of them. Hell, she had become a nurse partly because of all the men she would meet. Now it seemed a stupid and childish notion. War was not at all romantic, in fact for the most part it got in the way of romance.

'You okay there, Boyle?' Roe leant over the wounded man. Boyle grunted.

Half an hour later the Surgeon and Grace had stabalised Boyle and it looked as though he was probably going to make it. Boyle was packed off back to the rear and then probably back to England where he would be fed and washed properly. She couldn't deny that she wasn't a little jealous of him, not that shrapnel wounds were fun but she would do anything for a warm shower.

She was left to study Eugene Roe. Brief glances in Aldbourne did not mean that she knew him but she soon discovered he wasn't one to bare his soul. In reality he was shy, quiet to the point of awkwardness but thoroughly, thoroughly adorable. The dark hair, the sad eyes he would be irresistable to most girls without having any idea of his effect.

'I'm surprised I don't see you back here more often.'

He shrugged slightly, not looking up from his tin cup of coffee. 'I prefer it on the line. I do more good there than back here.'

'You're a good medic,' she said kindly. 'I know why they picked you for it.'

'You do?'

'It's your voice.' He frowned. 'You have a very nice voice. It's calming.'

He smiled faintly. 'No one's ever said that to me before.'

'I don't believe that.'

He stared into the grainy coffee's dark depths for a few moments. His hands were stained with dried blood, his knuckles were brown with the stuff, it stained the webs of his calluses. They looked like hers. She remembered when she used to file her nails and paint them bright colours. Bruised and battered they were now far from attractive but they were a nurse's hands and she wore them with pride as he wore his.

'You should come off the line more often,' she commented. 'You could always use a break and I could always find you some coffee.'

'Thank you, m'am.'

'God, you're polite, Eugene.'

The next smile was genuine and enchanting. 'Just like my mother taught me.' He swigged the last dregs of the drink before standing up. 'I better get going.'

'Aren't you going to wait for a jeep?'

'No, I'll walk. It ain't far.'

As he was leaving the now familiar screech of a jeep rang through the air for the fourth time that morning. Grace sighed, so much for a slow day.

**A/N: Hey, everyone thanks muchly for the reviews, you are all my new best friends.**


	12. Chapter 12

17th October 1944

Things were looking up in Holland. Infantry combat had subsided reducing the number of casualties with which the nurses had to deal with in the Aid Station. There was a feeling that the war was winding down for the winter, each side resting and re-supplying for the better weather in the spring. Despite this artillery was still a problem even for a single man. As Webster had said the Germans were so well supplied they could afford to fire at anything that moved.

Grace took the opportunity of a quiet morning to visit Dick Winters who she had not seen in a month since the beginning of the Holland campaign. 2nd Battalion of the 506th had been stationed nearby by in Schoonderlogt. Another reason for wanting to visit him was the recent news that, as she had predicted he had been promoted to 2nd Battalion XO following Major Horton's death.

Dick Winters sat in a grim little room, hunched over a typewriter, punching the keys jerkily like an old man confused by the strange contraption. He didn't look right behind a desk.

'You know you can use more than two fingers on that thing.' Grace's voice shook him out of his concentrated state. His smile was strained as he looked up. Despite the beds and the roof over his head he looked more tired and more worn than ever before.

He raised his hands defensively from the keyboard. 'I've never had to use one of these things before.'

'You're more of a pen and paper man then?'

'I'm more of a get up and do it man rather sitting around writing about it.' He exhaled deeply. 'I told Sink I wasn't cut out for all this administration.'

'Do you need help?' she asked sliding over to the desk. 'I'm a very fast typer.'

'You are?'

'Oh, yes. I do have talents. Back when I was training in the civilian hospital I was practically relegated to secretary.'

'That feels a little like cheating.'

'Only to a man with such a strict sense of right and wrong. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.'

'It doesn't feel like much of a promotion,' he said miserably.

Winters looked despondently down at the half a page of work he had already completed. It was slow going and he welcomed the brief distraction that Grace presented.

'How do you feel about dogs?' he pondered enigmatically.

'Dogs?'

'Yeah.'

'Uh… they're all right, I suppose. I always wanted one as a kid but mum wouldn't hear of it.'

Winters smiled. 'I can imagine that. Have you met Sergeant Talbert?'

Sergeant Talbert, first name Floyd was a very smiley, very charming man. His dog, first name Trigger was equally loveable.

'You see, m'am,' explained Talbert or Tab as she was told to call him. 'We'd keep him but a Company pet just ain't practical.'

'And you think it is for me? You clearly haven't met my Matron.'

'I can't just abandon him and do you honestly think any of the civilians have enough food to spare for a dog? I've been feeding him K rations.'

Talbert's large dark eyes were round and pleading. Trigger nuzzled her knees and cast her with the exact same expression. Perhaps the saying about pets looking like their owners was true. It was a two fronted assault on her defences. Grace groaned inwardly. She knew there was no refusing this dog now, it would be like casting off a child. She also knew that there would be no explaining this to Matron.

'Oh, all right,' she sighed. 'I'll take him but if Matron doesn't like it I'm sending her your way, Sergeant Talbert.'

Tab grinned with relief. 'Thank you.' He knelt down to the dog's height and scratched him behind the ear which Trigger seemed to appreciate. 'You be good, buddy. I'll come a visit you lots.' He looked up at Grace. 'He likes chocolate.'

'So do I but it doesn't mean either of us are going to get any.'

In a surprising turn of events, Matron turned out to be an animal lover. It was frankly bizarre to see a woman who was so utterly unpleasant to people cooing over a scruffy stray dog, feeding him scraps of food, rubbing him behind his ears. There were rules though, Trigger could wonder anywhere about the town, sleep on any bed he chose but he was forbidden from the wards. Too often he was found sitting patiently outside the door to the Aid Station greeting any injured man with a friendly bark. When he wasn't playing guard dog he was acting as Matron's shadow, trotting beside her brisk, officious march.

'That's too strange for me to deal with,' commented Grace as she and Dorothea watch the odd couple pass by.

Dorothea shrugged. 'At least it shows she likes something. I always thought that it was impossible for one woman to hate everything.'

Grace glanced over at Maggie. Across the road, sat atop a wall, her legs crossed to show off her shapely limbs to best advantage she was talking to handsome man in his thirties wearing the familiar Red Beret of a British paratroops regiment. Studying her body language at a distance, Grace could recognize all the tell-tale signs of flirting; fluttering eyelashes the occasional carefully placed hair flick. 'Who's the Red Devil?'

'Haven't the foggiest,' answered Dorothea. 'I don't know where she picks them up.'

It was at this time that George Luz strolled over smiling that same cocky smile he had first introduced himself with. 'Morning, ladies.'

'George,' Grace said. 'What can I do for you?'

'Your friend,' he said nodding at Maggie at this point saying her goodbyes to the Lieutenant Colonel. 'I told you I liked her.'

'Seriously, George? That was like 4 months ago.'

'She's still pretty,' he reasoned.

'You're just not her type,' she insisted as kindly as possible.

'Type? I'm everybody's type. What's her type?'

Grace tried to put the matter as delicately as possible. 'She's classy. She likes money and men with… I don't know Law Degrees.'

'I'm just asking for an introduction.'

Grace looked reluctant.

'Well, if you're not going to do it,' snapped George. 'I don't need nobody setting me up.'

She looked at his determined face and sighed defeated. It was probably best to let him get it out of his system. She'd knock him back and he'd get over it. 'Fine. Go ahead.'

'Like I needed your goddamn permission.'

With a sense of resignation Grace led him over to Maggie.

'Who's he?' asked Grace nodding after the Red Devil who had previously been occupying her friend's attention.

'A Lieutenant-Colonel,' she answered, aware of George's presence and exaggerating the form of her full lips as she spoke. 'How do you fancy my chances?'

'I think you'd win the game for sure with that.' It was a long running game amongst the girls, whoever seduced the highest ranking officer would win. There was no question that Maggie would win as she already had an RAF Wing Commander back home. Points were awarded for the comparative ranks so you could either go for quantity as some girls did, or quality as Maggie preferred. Grace wasn't really playing.

George nudged her less than surreptitiously and gave her a meaningful look. Apparently he was after an introduction. 'Maggie,' she said. 'Have you met…'

'Hi, I'm George. You want a cigarette?' George dove in and offered her a packet. Maggie looked him up and down wearily before cautiously taking two cigarettes. One she placed between her painted lips the other was tucked away in her pocket for later. George taking this as a favourable sign leant over a lit it for her. Legs crossed elegantly and leaning back she inhaled the smoke with a languor like a jungle cat or a blonde Cleopatra. George continued to stare at her with utter awe. Maggie didn't offer him a word. 'I'm a paratrooper in the 101st.'

That line might have impressed a dozen impressionable young girls back in England but to Maggie it didn't mean a thing. 'I know. I've seen you around.'

Grace wanted to groan. She could tell that George would take this as something more than a simple statement. To attest to this fact George raised his eyebrows hopefully as a sign that maybe she should leave the two of them alone. She was only too happy.

_31__st__ October 1944_

On the last night of October Grace was woken by Dorothea attempting to put her boots on in the dark. The two of them shared a bed in one of the houses that had been assigned for the use of the nurses and Grace was a reasonably light sleeper so it was hard for her clumsy friend to slip out unseen.

'What are you doing?' she moaned sleepily, turning over and hugging the blanket closer to her body.

'Nothing,' whispered Dorothea. 'Doctor Philips needs my help with a patient in the Operating room.'

'Which Regiment?' Grace muttered still half awake but thinking of her Easy Company acquaintances.

'Haven't a clue,' answered Dorothea. 'Get dressed and you can find out yourself.'

Grace did so, heaving herself out of bed and pulling on her ODs and boots but without doing up the laces. She arrived in the Aid Station a few minutes later to be met by the red stained Easy Company medic and her blood went cold.

'What happened?' she asked a stunned looking Eugene Roe.

'It's Lieutenant Heyliger,' he said weakly. 'Got shot by a sentry.'

'Oh, God. Is it bad?'

'Two holes; one in the shoulder, the second nicked the femoral artery.'

That would explain why he was so covered in blood, that artery released blood with a lot of pressure. It also meant that his chances of surviving were slim unless they got a couple of blood transfusions in him quick.

Eugene saw her horrified expression. 'Yeah,' he retorted heatedly. 'And to top it all off it looks like Winters and Welsh probably over-dosed him on morphine.' He shook his head. Grace had never seen him so angry, never even imagined him capable of raising his voice. 'I gave them hell, I really did. But they should know. Mistakes like this don't have to happen.'

Grace rubbed his arm supportively in an attempt to call him down. 'I can go in there and see how he's doing.'

He nodded and Grace pushed through the doors into the Operating room. She walked straight into Dorothea whose clipped back chestnut hair was tousled around her distracted face. 'He'll live,' she said simply.

'Are you sure?'

She nodded. 'Doctor Philips is just stitching him up. They're evacuating him tonight.'

Grace relayed this news to Eugene who almost deflated with relief. As soon as he heard that Heyliger was out of danger the worry he felt was instantly replaced with guilt and embarrassment at loosing his temper with Winters and Welsh, his superior officers. It took a bit of convincing to assure him that they would have taken no offense and that it was probably best that he got back to bed and get some rest. It was now coming up to 1 in the morning.

Harry Welsh was curled up in the corner outside the Aid Station, awake but unaware of the movement around him, she had no idea how long he'd been there. His uniform was crusted with the dark stains of dried blood, Heyliger's she'd have to presume and he was studying his equally filthy hands with enough intent to burn.

'Harry?' she called as she approached him.

He looked up wearily. 'Hey, babydoll. How's the Moose doing?'

'It's bad but he'll recover.' She slid down the wall to sit beside him, drawing up her knees to her chest. 'With any luck he'll be home before Christmas which is more than I can say for us.' He nodded but the news didn't seem to relieve any of his tension, the distress was still there. 'Eugene didn't mean to shout. He doesn't blame you.'

'No, but Dick does.'

Grace frowned. 'What do you mean? Has he said something?'

'No, of course he hasn't said anything but when he looked at me I could tell he was pissed.' Harry sighed deeply and scrubbed his face with his hands, an attempt to wake up from a bad dream. 'He told me he was doing an inspection tonight. He told me to warn the sentries. I guess I just forgot.'

'It was an accident,' she said. 'You can't think about whose responsibly it was with these kinds of things or you start to blame everybody. Heyliger's to blame because he forgot the password, the sentry because he was jumpy, Dick because he can't sit behind a desk for five seconds without getting itchy feet.'

Harry hardly seemed to be listening. 'They could have died, Grace. Dick couldn't have died, he was standing right next to him.'

'But he didn't.' Grace forcefully turned his face towards her so that he was looking directly in her eyes. 'Stop thinking like that, it'll drive you insane. Go home, go to bed, okay?'

He nodded and unsteadily stood to his feet, wiping his bloody hands on his OD's. As if in a daze he stumbled away from the Aid Station without sparing her a second glance.

**A/N: Bit of a short filler chapter but I'm excited because we're getting closer to Bastogne which should be interesting to write. Reviews make me smile!**


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: Sorry it's been a while. I hate it when real life gets in the way.**

The rumours that had been circulating since early November, that they would be spending Christmas in the calm, safe haven of Mourmelon turned out to be true. However, as much as Grace enjoyed France, the nights out at various Red Cross clubs, the dancing with friendly, well dressed Officers and the less than heavy work load, what she really wanted was to be spending Christmas at home with her family.

She had heard from her mother that her younger brother Robbie had managed to wrangle some leave for the Christmas period and she had been desperate to do the same just so all the family could be back together again. She wanted to see Lillian getting round and fat even though she knew she probably wouldn't be around to see the baby born. She wanted to eat food made by someone who knew how to cook.

But even without being at home Grace still had a reminder of Aldbourne. No matter where she was she seemed to find it impossible to escape from Easy Company. One of her only serious patients, more serious than an in growing toenail or a bout of winter flu was Bill Guarnere. A joy-riding incident gone wrong.

Besides that the girls experienced what they had so long been missing; free time. Empty afternoons, evenings even whole days. Small groups would disappear daily to see the sites of Paris or visit the roadside cafes of Caen. An entertainment committee had been set up with the idea of maybe performing a Christmas panto. They were also spending an inordinate amount of time hanging around the American base camp just down the road, something Matron naturally disapproved of but could do little to stop. The whole of Western Europe was awash with lonely young men far from home and the young women were all jumping at the chance to feel flattered and feminine again.

A few weeks into their French sojourn Grace was summoned by Matron. Grace had stopped wondering what it was about her that disappointed Matron so much more than the other girls and, as she stepped into her office she didn't even feel nervous. Whatever it was that she'd done to offend the woman she'd learnt that it was best not to argue rather take the punishment and get on with it. It was an Army mantra and it made a lot of sense.

Like Dick, Matron looked strange behind a desk. It was funny thinking about similarities between the two but in different ways they were both such hands-on and forceful leaders it seemed wrong to confine them to an office.

'Come in, Sister Barnes,' the older woman directed. She didn't sound angry which worried Grace more than anything. 'I'm a busy woman so I'll get this over as quickly as possible. You've probably heard that Sister Wallace is leaving us to get married. As wonderful an occasion it is for her it also leaves me short of a Staff Nurse. After careful consideration I have chosen you as her replacement.'

Grace's mouth dropped open idiotically. A promotion was the last thing she was expecting and the thing that least made sense. 'But Matron there are older girls, more experienced girls.'

'It's true you're a bit younger than your average Staff Nurse but I have been watching you for quite a while now, Sister Barnes and I believe that out of all of the girls you have matured the most. You still have quite a way to go before you become a truly exceptional nurse…'

She ignored this last sentence, swept away in the compliment. A compliment from Matron. It felt like she had wandered into a parallel universe. It took a few moments for her to realise that Matron was still talking.

'You're duties will intensify, of course. The rotas will be your responsibility, you will mentor the junior staff and liaise with both me and the senior doctors. You will also wear the rank of Captain.'

'And my pay?' Grace asked tentatively.

The faintest ghost of smile trailed across the other woman's lips, so faint it was barely there. 'Your pay will, of course increase.'

Following this unexpected news Maggie insisted that they must celebrate. Never before had anyone seen her so enthusiastic.

'Caen, I'm sick of. It's old hat,' she declared. 'Paris is cliché.'

'I've always wanted to go to Paris,' sighed Dorothea. 'It's the city of romance, you know.'

'Like you need any more romance,' said Grace. 'Think about us single girls.'

'Enough!' cried Maggie. 'We do not need romance. We need adventure and we need alcohol. Both of these things we will find in Rheims. That is where we are going this weekend.'

Wearing anything but their uniforms was, of course forbidden and besides no one had anything else to wear but they spent enough time doing their make-up, curling their hair all the things they missed doing in England.

Just before leaving the post was handed around by an orderly. Grace received two letters; one from Lillian, the other in Webster's neat, measured handwriting. Lillian's she cast aside to be read later, the goings on of the Aldbourne crowd could wait, Webster's she tore open eagerly. In the weeks since he had returned to England the had exchanged a handful of letters which, on his part were lively and well-written. He certainly showed a flair for description and under his skilful hand the doctors, nurses and other patients peopling his rehabilitation ward had become dynamic characters of elaborate, amusing anecdotes. The humour of them was tempered by the longing he expressed to be back amongst the men he had grown to look on as a dysfunctional family. As much as he had longed to get away from the war he missed the camaraderie it had bought him.

The letters were not, however love letters. Grace had seen those correspondences shared between Dorothea and Malcolm Fletcher which were bursting with promises and emotion all of which were completely devoid in her exchanges with Webster. All of this proved that the single kiss in Aldbourne was not going to progress into anything more. What the relationship had died from was unclear; apathy, embarrassment or a simple, mutual, unconscious decision that the two made wonderful friends but it was best to leave it at that. It didn't concern Grace much and she sensed that if she had really wanted things to go farther with David she should be feeling a little more disappointed.

There was not yet to be any proper form of public transport in their area of France, no trains or buses which would convey them the 30kms to Rheims but lifts were easy to come by. The roads were packed with military vehicles more than happy to take three pretty nurses wherever they wanted to go. At least that's what Maggie insisted.

'We just need to flag down an RASC truck,' she said. 'It'll be no trouble.'

Which is how they ended up on the side of a deserted highway, trudging discouragingly in the direction they suspected Rheims to be, listening out for the sound of any distant vehicle.

'This isn't going to happen,' pronounced Dorothea finally. 'I think we should just head back.'

'No!' cried Grace who had been desperately looking forward to at least one night in a new and exotic city that did not smell of death. 'Just give it a few minutes, something will show up.'

Ten more minutes in the freezing cold and they greeted by the sight of two pinpricks of light. Headlamps on the horizon. Jumping up and down madly on the side of the road a battered blue Renault slowed to a juddering stop and the driver, a greasy looking Frenchman poked his head out of the window.

'Where are you going?' he asked.

'Rheims,' replied Maggie.

'Rheims, ah Reims.' He leaned back into the car and discussed the idea with his other passengers hidden away in shadow. After a few nervous seconds he reappeared and nodded. 'No problem.'

He kicked open the door and Grace and Maggie eagerly climbed in the back, Dorothea followed somewhat reluctantly. Once inside his smoky, smelly car sitting on the sticky back seats they could see that his passengers were a woman and a teenage boy squeezed into the front seat. No introductions were made and they were viewed with suspicious wide dark eyes.

The engine kicked in with a loud, disturbing clatter and they were all jerked violently forward. The Frenchman didn't seem overly concerned and accompanied the mechanical groaning by humming a little meandering tune under his breath. He reached across the two in the front seat to open the glove compartment and pull out a bottle which he drank from.

'What's he drinking?' Dorothea whispered to Grace.

Grace leaned forward. 'Champagne, I think.'

'Champagne!'

'_Cherie_,' cried the Frenchman. 'Do not look so shocked! This is liberated France, champagne is like water here.' He passed the bottle into the back.

Maggie grabbed the bottle and drank. 'Cheers.'

She passed it on to Grace, who with a shrug of her shoulders followed suite. Her experience of champagne was greatly limited, it wasn't a beverage that featured on the ration book in fact she had only really seen it drunk in films. The taste pleased her though she was sure that drinking it straight from the bottle was not how it was supposed to be done.

About 10 minutes into the journey, Dorothea insisted that they stop, in typically delicate terms insisting that she needed to answer a couple of nature. She also insisted that Grace and Maggie had to go with her, it being far too dark out in the French countryside to go anywhere alone.

They climbed out the back of the car, cursing Dorothea, her small bladder and her fear of the dark to hell. It was dark and cold enough to see the breath curling before their faces as they waited, stamping their feet for Dorothea to re-emerge from behind a high hedge. Suddenly there was a breathy gasp as if all the wind had been sucked out of her mouth.

'Are you okay?' called Grace.

Maggie rolled her eyes. 'Probably fallen into a ditch with her knickers round her ankles, silly cow.'

The two followed Dorothea's gasp through the high hedge and found her on the other side staring numbly into the darkness ahead of her.

'What are you doing?' asked Maggie. 'He's not going to wait all night.'

Grace followed Dorothea's gaze and landed on two shallow graves hidden in the shadows. The graves were so shallow that some burrowing animal had managed to unearth the rotting bare foot of one of the corpses, his boots had obviously been stripped by who ever had buried them. A bayonet stuck firmly in the earth marked each grave. Grace crept closer to examine them.

'They're German,' she concluded. 'They've probably been here since the landings.'

Dorothea shuddered.

'We should go,' said Maggie. 'Unless you still need to go?'

'No!' cried Dorothea. 'I'm not going here. I'd rather hold it in, thank you.'

They turned and removed themselves back to the car.

Dorothea needn't have worried about their driver. They arrived in Rheims safely after rejecting only a little persuasion that they come home with him.

Just as in other cities in France the place was an entirely military town with every man dressed in some for of uniform. Civilians were nowhere to be seen. A large bomb damaged theatre had been requisitioned by the Red Cross as a dance hall and Grace dragged the other two girls inside the smoky, noisy building.

'Hey, Marlene!'

There was only one person that had ever called her that. She turned around to see Joe Liebgott and a group of other Easy Company men across the room. 'Typical. I can't go 5 minutes without one of you lot popping up.'

Liebgott shrugged. 'What can I say? It's destiny.'

Grace thought it much less destiny than coincidence, though the way Liebgott phrased it had a romantic ring to it. She did the rounds of introductions. She knew most of the men with Liebgott; Talbert who politely asked after his dog, Muck and Penkala, Malarkey, More and Grant. She was also introduced to a Lieutenant Compton with blonde hair so bright it was almost white. He was introduced to her as Buck, a nickname which to English ears sounded ridiculous but, she assumed must be an American thing. George Luz was also among the group and he quickly sidled up to an indifferent Maggie.

Grace was barely off the dance floor the whole night but committed herself to dancing only with the Easy Company men. Compton was a fair dancer if a little clumsy, Skip Muck fair, Joe Liebgott poor but he tried hard, Talbert was the most proficient as well as being charming to boot and therefore occupied most of her dancing attentions.

Finally she managed to make her way back to a seat where Easy Company seemed to have become involved in a drunken exchange of insults with a loud group of men from the 82nd Airborne.

'Hey, Mac,' cried one of the 82nd boys in a loud voice, part of an obviously rehearsed bit. 'What's the Eagle screaming?'

His friend offered the punch line. 'Help! Help!'

The table burst into raucous laughter disproportionate to the quality of the joke. In contrast Easy Company's table was less than impressed.

'Give me a reason and I'll shut those flyboys up,' growled Liebgott through gritted teeth and clenched fists.

'Leave it, Joe,' said Compton. 'They're not worth rough-housing over.'

'Yeah, Joe,' laughed the 82nd boy. 'Do as Lieutenant says.'

'All right, that's it!' Liebgott jumped to his feet, apparently having taken all the provocation he could bare and socked his new enemy in the chin with a swift right hook.

Just as the band chimed up with Glenn Miller's famous 'In the Mood' Easy Company launched themselves at the 82nd Company and things descended into chaos. Tables were pushed aside, bottles and glasses smashed and in the middle of it all the cries of 'Currahee' as the drunken Easy boys were aided by other members of the various Divisions of the 101st launching into the brawl.

Dorothea squealed as Talbert was thrown backwards onto the table, apologized and launched himself back into the scrum leaving her covered in spilt whiskey. Grace burst out laughing at her horrified face and grabbed her hand.

'I think we better go,' she yelled over the noise, dragging her friend away.

'Where's Maggie?' she asked.

They met her at the door followed by George Luz, mouth smeared with a distinctive shade of red lipstick. Perhaps Grace had underestimated the power of his charm.

'What's going on?' asked George.

'We're leaving,' said Dorothea. 'I think maybe your friends need you.'

They grabbed Maggie's arms and pulled her out of the door.

The three girls staggered through Reims' beautiful streets, buildings shattered by war it looked like a gothic wasteland. Grace would have taken her shoes off if she could but the road was strewn with shards of broken glass, remnants of fights similar to the one Easy Company was currently involved in. Instead she steadied her tipsy feet by leaning on her two equally tipsy friends.

'Why do they call you Marlene?' asked Dorothea.

'Can't you see the resemblance?'

'No. Not even if I squint.'

That conversation resulted in a drunken ramble home singing _'Lili Marlene' _at the top of their lungs with made up lyrics where the real ones were forgotten.

Slipping into bed, still fully clothed Grace fumbled for Lillian's letter, the one she had discarded earlier. The envelope was battered, creased, stained who knew what it had been through to get here. Knowing the British Army it had probably been to Burma and back before arriving. There was no feeling of suspense or trepidation as she torn the envelope which made the sudden dropping sensation in her stomach feel as if she had just fallen 100 feet. She scanned the short, scrawled note once, then twice before dashing into the bathroom and throwing up in the sink.

Grace didn't tell anyone what the letter contained until early the next morning when she went straight down to Matron's office. She felt numb and heavy as if she were walking through quicksand, the sand filling her ears making all the mindless chatter around her muffled and indistinct. How could a single letter shatter your world like that?

'Matron?' she called knocking on the door. As expected the woman was up and she beckoned Grace in without surprise.

'What is it Sister Barnes?' she asked brusquely shuffling through some papers.

'I need some compassionate leave,' Grace said simply. 'My brother's died.'

Matron paused thinking over the request. When she spoke she didn't offer any condolences or sympathies which Grace appreciated, for someone to say that they were sorry would make the horrible situation real. 'You'll be wanting to go to England. I can give you a 72 hour pass, you will have to arrange your own transport though.'

Grace nodded. 'Thank you.'

**A/N: Again another filler chapter but the plot will pick up a bit next time. Promise.**


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: I'm going away for the weekend and wanted to get this up before then so I haven't really proof read it as much as I should, in fact my train in half an hour so I don't have time to read it through at all. Hope you like. **

'How you doing?' asked Speirs.

He raised his voice over the rumbling of the jeep's engine as they skidded over Wiltshire's icy country roads. It was the first time he had spoken in what felt like hours and Grace almost jumped out of her skin.

'Oh, yeah, fine,' she said. 'Thanks for asking.'

It had been less than a day since she had left France. With Speirs with her everything seemed to happen so much faster than when she was one her own. Cars seemed to appear out of nowhere, the crew of an empty transport ship allowed them aboard seemingly just because he said so. When Ronald Speirs wanted something done it got done. And Grace appreciated this. She liked for someone to take the responsibility out of her hands for once.

'And thanks for coming,' she added.

He nodded. 'No problem.'

The US Army jeep winded through the familiar Aldbourne streets but it was like looking at them through a fogged window. Everything was unchanged but unfamiliar. What hurt most was looking at the church where her brother would not be buried. They hadn't found anything that could be buried.

They drew up to the darkened house and Grace and Speirs climbed out of the car. The rumble of the vehicle had alerted Lillian to their presence and she greeted them at the door.

Lillian had grown round in the few short months since Grace had left. Always a short woman, like Grace herself, the swollen pregnant stomach engulfed her. Grace climbed out the back of the jeep and hugged her sister gingerly, unsure of the pressure she was allowed to place on a woman in such a fragile state.

'I'm so glad you could come,' said Lillian. 'I couldn't cope with this on my own.'

'It's only a few days. I'm sorry it couldn't be longer. Where's Mum?'

'In the kitchen.'

Grace hurried inside. Speirs had hung back during the exchange. He didn't seem like a man who could easily pull off overt displays of public affection, even if that affection meant something as simple as greeting his grieving wife. As she pulled open the front door Grace caught a glimpse of him slipping a hand over her stomach and placing a gentle kiss on Lillian's forehead.

Grace placed the kettle on the stove and listened to the gentle simmer of the steadily boiling water.

'Did Lily tell you?' she called in a voice louder and brighter than necessary. 'I have to get back in two days.'

'Two days?' repeated her mother dimly. 'That's hardly any time at all. Tell them you have to stay longer.'

'I don't want you going back at all. I know a woman whose daughter was killed in Singapore. Raped and murdered by the Japanese.'

'Well, there are very few Japanese soldiers in France.' Grace instantly regretted the flippant comment. She sat beside her mother but couldn't get her to look into her eyes. 'It's not like that in Europe. We're perfectly safe. No one's getting hurt.'

Her mother sniffed as if to say "it's only a matter of time".

'Look, Mum, I wish I could stay here with you a bit longer, I really do, but if I don't go back it's called desertion and I'll be court-martialled. Please don't ask me.'

'I should have asked Robbie,' she sobbed. 'A mother's supposed to protect her children and I let my youngest put himself in such danger.'

The kettle whistled loudly, breaking the conversation by allowing Grace to occupy herself with the tea things. She didn't know what to say.

Grace stepped out of her room. She hadn't slept well, kept up by flashbacks and memories or Robbie as well as the realisation that she slept much better on army issue camp beds. She paused when dressing wondering whether she should wear black. The fact the she owned nothing black decided that for her.

The house was quiet. There were muted whispers coming out of Lillian's room but beyond that only silence. She tiptoed down the stairs, wanting to preserve the fragile lack of noise.

Once downstairs Grace's eyes were naturally drawn to the portrait of Robbie, still resting in its usual place on the mantelpiece. She remembered Nixon's observations of it being like a shrine and wondered why she hadn't recognized at the time how horribly prophetic those words sounded.

'Are you all right there, love?' her father was sitting in the corner of the room staring at the same picture that had been the focus of her attention. He was looking grey and ill. She was suddenly struck by a pang of guilt.

She nodded. 'Where's Mum?'

'In bed. I wouldn't expect her to be up yet.' This was unlike her mother who usually liked to be the first up and the last to go to bed but Grace didn't question this change in her behaviour. It was just one more change within her family that she hadn't been aware of.

'You're looking skinny,' commented her father. 'Are you eating enough.'

'No,' she answered simply.

He took off his reading glasses and looked over at her with the same penetrating stare he had been fixing her with since she was 5 years old. 'You're mother just worries about you.'

'Really? She never took much interest before.'

'Well, that was before…' A quick glance at the photograph finished the sentence competently enough. 'Maybe you should consider staying.'

'I can't,' she insisted, aggregately. She was just so sick of answering that question. 'I don't want to. I like being a nurse. I like being in the army and being apart of something like that. Can you all stop making me feel guilty for that?'

Grace stormed out of the house, struggling with the sleeves of her coat. She didn't know where she was going she just knew that she had to get out of the space that was so full of other people's emotions she couldn't even see her own. She didn't want to worry about her parents or think about what Lillian must be going through. All she wanted was to have five minutes peace and quiet to grasp how Grace felt about loosing her sibling.

Suddenly, she was skidding on a patch of ice. Her arms flailed, gravity threatened to send her tumbling heavily to the ground.

'Whoa there.'

A steadying arm grabbed her and set her on her feet. Grace looked down at the hand. It was Nixon's. She pulled away.

'That was embarrassing,' she said with a blush.

'I won't tell anyone.'

Grace frowned. 'Wait, what are you doing here?'

'I got some Christmas leave. Came to look up a girl.'

'Oh? And how is she?'

He smiled. 'She's great, thank you.' The smiled faltered. 'Hey, I heard about your brother. Sorry.'

'I'm fine.'

'Are you?'

Under the warmth of his concern Grace felt tears springing into her eyes. She looked away and blinked rapidly. 'I will be. I just need some time on my own.'

'Oh.' He turned away.

'No!' she cried. 'I didn't mean to be rude. And I didn't mean you should go. I just meant that I need some time away from my family.'

'Huh. Where you going?'

She paused. She hadn't really thought, she had just been walking an in ten or fifteen minutes she would have turned back. But that wasn't what she wanted. 'Do you want to come to the seaside with me?'

'The beach?' he asked with a raised eyebrow. 'In December?'

'Yeah. It's spontaneous and unusual. Do you want to come?'

He nodded seriously. 'Okay.'

It was the end of 1944 and the war was supposedly nearly over but even still the train had to back into a tunnel to take shelter from an air raid. The Luftwaffe weren't the problem anymore not like they had been in 1941 now it was the V-1 bombs flying across the Channel exploding over South-East England indiscriminately.

'Maybe this wasn't the best place to go for a quiet trip,' Grace said wryly.

The train was empty. A woman with a pram, an old man, a few injured serviceman eying up Nixon's smart American uniform with distaste as they past through the carriage.

'What's their problem?' Nixon asked finally after a particularly dirty look from one private with his arm in a sling.

'You,' she explained. 'You're American. Do you know how many men are going to come home to fine their girl has run off with one of you smooth talking Yanks?'

'Think how my wife's going to feel.'

'I think we both know you're never going to tell you're wife what, I'm sorry, who you've been doing here.'

After half an hour of waiting in the tunnel the train finally pulled up into Dover station with the sound of the 'all clear' siren ringing in their ears. A short half mile walk brought them to the turbulent seafront where pretty streets where shadowed by the looming figure of the 12th century castle, a memory of past wars set into the high white cliffs which made the town famous. The choice of location had been Nixon's. There had been plenty of seaside towns to choose from; Brighton, Weymouth, Bournemouth, Portsmouth but he had chosen this one.

'So, why Dover?' she asked.

'It reminded me of a poem we studied in class once,' he answered, keeping his view firmly fixed on the steely grey waters ahead. 'I don't know why, it just jumped into my head.'

'So, not the song then?'

'Christ, no. I hate that song.'

Grace stared around at the unstable houses, the anti-aircraft guns, the barbed wire curling around the mined beach. She had been here a couple of times as a child before the war, in the summer when the place had been bursting with sandy children building sandcastles. She had been one of those children. She know regretted deeply what was had done to the pretty seaside town. She regretted what war had done to her. 'I wish you were here in the summer,' she said. 'I'd have liked to show it to you the way it used to be.'

He led her over to a wooden bench facing the horizon and she sat beside him just touching but feeling comfortable about it. 'After the war, you can show me after the war.'

'And you'll show me New York?'

'New York, Chicago, San Francisco, anywhere you want to go.'

She smiled. 'Promises, promises.'

'You right, that's not going to happen.'

There was a long and not entirely awkward pause. Grace liked him being there. It felt all right just to sit in complete silence wrapped up in her own thoughts, he absorbed in his own yet she had someone there to talk to whenever she wanted to speak aloud. It wasn't just Robbie's death that had made her quiet. Just a few months earlier she would have been able to talk and talk, streams of empty mildly amusing words but going to war had since robbed her of her voice. She wondered what Nixon had been like before the Army. She'd have liked to compare the two personalities but it was impossible to even imagine him in civilian clothes.

'Why did you come?' she asked finally.

'Don't you want me here?'

'No. It's just weren't you going to spend with that girl?'

'I am spending my day with a girl.'

'Be serious!' she insisted. 'You barely know me. I can think of much more fun things to do with my leave.'

He lifted an eyebrow suggestively. 'Oh, yeah?'

Grace raised her arms in mock defeat. 'Why do I bother? You can't be serious.'

'I can about some things.'

She ignored this inscrutable response. 'I feel bad about leaving.'

'There's nothing wrong with running away from your problems,' he said. 'Why do you think I came to Europe.'

'And look where you ended up,' she noted bitterly.

'Yeah. Seems like I got a whole now set of problems on top of the old ones.' He took another swig from the silver flask which he had kept close at hand the entire day.

'You drink too much.'

He cast the flask a look of fond regret. 'That's an old problem.'

They caught the station master locking the gates just as they ran up. Besides the old man the place was deserted and night had definitely fallen.

'We've missed it,' groaned Grace.

'I guess we're not getting back to Aldbourne tonight,' said Nixon lighting a conciliatory cigarette.

'We can't stay!' she said. 'My parents would flip.'

'Oh, yeah months living a war zone's fine but a night in Dover because you missed the train…'

'A night in Dover with a strange man, no offence meant.' She sighed at the inevitability of the situation. 'This is not going to look good.'

Nixon pulled his coat tighter around himself and shivered exaggeratedly. 'Well, we can't stay out here. Look, let's go to a hotel. I'll pay. They'll be two rooms. I'll be a perfect gentleman.'

'I didn't doubt that.'

The hotel manager looked the pair of them up and down with a leer. He pushed the guest book towards Nixon with a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" kind of attitude that made Grace blush horribly.

'And that would be Mr and Mrs Smith?' the manager asked with a raised eyebrow.

Nixon regarded him coolly and with a hint of well cultivated disdain which presumably came from many years a practiced entitlement. 'We're not married.'

The round man flushed beetroot and stuttered beneath Nixon's air of utter and complete superiority. 'So that'll be two rooms then?'

'I think that'd be best.'

Nixon paid the unpleasant little man a handful of notes and in exchange was handed two small keys from a row of hooks behind the reception desk. Grace didn't bother suggesting that they split the cost; she didn't have any money on her and she knew for a fact that Nixon's pay was a great deal more than hers even with the new promotion.

'You might want to take this, as well,' the man handed her a small battery powered torch. She looked at him quizzically. 'The electric's gone upstairs. Don't want you tripping over in the blackout.'

They were led up a winding staircase past a woman ineffectual dusting with a malting feather duster. The idea that the woman would be dusting rather than sweeping the broken pain of glass from the window amused both Grace and Nixon and they exchanged a grin behind the man's back. The two rooms were on the 1st floor and, the man was quick to tell them, right next to each other. Grace was thankful once the door was closed behind her and she could be rid of him. It was dark but it wasn't late yet still Grace could think of nothing better to do than take off her shoes and climb into the bed.

She lay in the cold bed between brittle, heavy sheets in a room the smelt of dust and damp. The blackout curtains left her in the kind of darkness where you're not quite sure whether you your eyes are closed or not. She wondered very much if this is what death was like. People in church spoke of Heaven and eternal peace but Grace couldn't think of anything she wanted more than for death to be just closing her eyes and never waking up. She would give anything to be able to stop thinking about things that couldn't be helped. Death and war, they were out of her hands but thoughts of their horrors pressed upon her like an anvil resting on her chest.

With a decisive movement she grappled for the torch. Its light was dim and orange but it allowed her to see where to put on foot in front of the other. Without putting her shoes back on she found the door knob and crept into the corridor. In one of the opposite rooms she could hear a man's deep, rattling snore but besides that the hotel was quiet. Apprehensively she reached for Nixon's door and pushed it open. His room was lighter than hers, he hadn't bothered to draw the curtains and she could see his figure outlined in the dim light, his face illuminated by the predictable light of his cigarette.

'Grace?' he studded out the cigarette as she entered. 'What is it?'

Heart beating so loudly she was sure he could hear she sat down beside him on the bed, leant forward and kissed him.

He was still for a few shocked seconds before pulling away. 'What the hell…?'

'Shut up, will you?'

She kissed him again and this time he went with it. His tongue crept into her mouth and she could taste him properly. There was the cigarette smoke and whiskey, it was heady and intoxicating as if she was absorbing the alcohol from his lips.

The room was suddenly filled with an ominous, screeching whine. A V1 rocket. Nixon pulled away from her and she sighed in irritation.

'Shouldn't we get in the basement?'

She shook her head. 'Don't you know? We're safe as long as we can hear them.'

'Okay.'

Grace led his mouth back to hers and the rest of him compliantly returned to the moment. Swept away in a merge of trailing hands and clumsy fingers fumbling in the dark with too many clothes, they failed to notice the sudden disappearance of noise. The bomb's engine had cut out. There was a dull, thudding explosion not too far away. The walls shook. The curtain rail fell. Large white flakes of ceiling plaster showered the bed like snow but the kiss continued without hesitation.

**A/N: So as this chapter may have hinted this story has finally revealed itself to be of the Nixon/OC variety. Some of you may have guessed. I hope you're all ok with this. Love to captain ty and AivieEnchanted for the reviews.**


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: Thanks again captain ty and AivieEnchanted. Sorry it's been a while, school sucks as does Chaucer.**

'Wait, wait, wait. _Both _of you have?' Maggie and Dorothea nodded. Grace frowned. 'I mean Maggie I expected but you, Dorothea…'

She shrugged. 'We're engaged. You didn't think I'd make him wait 'til the wedding night.'

'I suppose not,' Grace sighed. 'I just suddenly feel a lot more innocent than I thought I was.'

Maggie patted her on the shoulder sympathetically. 'Well, you've done it now, that's the main thing.'

Just days after the event they were currently discussing, they were entering Belgium. The watery flakes Grace had seen in England where nothing compared to the towering piles of snow they were experiencing here. She had never seen so much, never knew so much could exist outside of the Arctic Circle. They huddled up against each other in the truck, swathed in their overcoats and scarves like penguins with chattering teeth, all praying to God they weren't being sent to a tented hospital.

They kept their spirits up by singing and gossiping. Grace had kept the details of her seaside adventure to a minimum particularly leaving out the important detail or who she had been with. This didn't stop her friends from speculating.

'Fine,' said Dorothea. 'You don't have to say who it was but maybe you could give us a hint and we can guess.'

'Is he married?' asked Maggie.

'I'm not saying.'

'That means he is.'

'No, it doesn't,' Dorothea jumped to Grace's defence. 'Grace is not the kind of person to sleep with a married man. What does he do? Is he a soldier or a sailor…?'

'I'm not going to tell you,' she said exasperatedly. 'But I can tell you he's not a tinker or a tailor.'

'Ha, ha. Very funny,' drawled Maggie. 'What about that American; good looking, intense eyes, seems a little grumpy.'

'Speirs? He's my brother-in-law.'

'Well, we've already established the man's married.'

'I'm not answering any more questions so stop asking.'

Thankfully they did and Grace was left in peace to study the wintry landscape. She wished she hadn't brought the subject up, not when her own feelings were so confused. She had never really thought about Nixon before. He was always there but on the periphery, he was Dick's friend, she never thought about him in his own right. She would have to now after what she'd done. Her head sank into her hands in embarrassment; what had possessed her to act like that? And what would he think of her now? Things had gone badly in the Ardennes and they had both been called back to their separate units so quickly there hadn't been time to gage his reaction to this particular development in their relationship.

It seemed silly wondering about all that stuff now. She was back at work and this time as Staff Nurse, the new pips were shining on her lapel. Soon she would have no time to worry about anything other than her patients which was they way it should be.

They pulled into the city of Bastogne and were presented with the greyest most miserable picture of war they had seen so far. Belgium had supposedly been liberated back in September; their had been parties and celebrations now, only months later and facing another cold, hard winter the war had returned to their borders and it was more than the country's morale could stand. Young women, huddled and grey like their grandmothers, bent with cold and hardship did not even look as yet another khaki truck rolled into their dilapidated town.

Trigger the dog bounded off the truck spraying them all in the grimy slush that coated the road. Not even the abysmal setting could bring down the spirits of the permanently cheerful dog. Grace fell out after him.

'Someone hold on to him,' she said. 'I don't want him wandering off.'

'Better watch out or someone will be making you into Trigger soup,' Maggie warned the dog.

'Don't say things like that,' scolded Dorothea.

'Don't be so naïve, 'Thea. These people haven't got anything. I'm sure there's someone unscrupulous enough to chop him up and pass him off as something else.'

Dorothea shuddered. 'I would never eat a dog.'

'Yeah, say that again after a few days without your ration packs.'

They stood beneath the shadow of a sturdily built Romanesque church, which as with many churches they had come across was now no longer a place of worship but an Aid Station marked by the sign of the Red Cross.

Once everyone was disembarked, Doctor Phillips, their highest ranking doctor gathered them all in a large group.

'Here's what will be happening,' announced Phillips loudly and imperiously. 'In the spirit of Allied cooperation we will be collecting the men of the 2nd Division who need evacuation and then, as the Americans say "getting the hell out of Dodge". We will be hot-footing it as quickly as possible to a Base Hospital in Brussels where we will remain probably for the duration.'

There was a collective sigh of relief and a small cheer amongst the bedraggled assembly of nurses, doctors and orderlies. No one wanted to spend any longer than they had to in the hellish backwater that was Bastogne.

'Staff Sister Barnes,' rapped Matron. A nudge from Maggie alerted Grace to the fact that she was being addressed. 'Yes, you Sister Barnes. Find one of the nurses here and organize an evacuation order. There are quite a few men here so we may have to do a couple of runs.'

Grace nodded and scuttled away towards the church, eager to acquit her task competently.

She was directed towards a pretty young Belgian woman with light brown hair covered by a blue handkerchief. She was civilian which was not what Grace had been expecting but the way she moved, with efficiency and confidence told her she was the right person to talk to.

'Hello,' she said. 'I'm Sister Barnes. Grace.'

'Renee,' the other woman snapped, she obviously had no time for pleasantries.

'Right. Who do you want us to take first? We need to have an order of priority.'

'These men along this wall,' she directed. 'The ones here are most serious. Those in the chapel are too bad to move.'

Grace looked up and down the motley row. They all looked serious to her, all young, children, green recruits surprised by an attack that was never supposed to happen, all with that dull, hollow look of horror haunting their wide eyes.

'You have no proper beds. Where are your sheets?'

'We have none. We use them for bandages and to cover the bodies.' She beckoned over a short round black woman who immediately hurried towards them. 'This is Anna. She will show you what needs doing. She speaks only French but I am sure she will get her meaning across.'

They spent much of the day moving as many wounded men as they could onto the trucks with the help of the American medics of the 326th Medical Company and unloaded all the supplies they had to spare.

Renee remained very quiet through out the whole process. Grace knew why; she wanted them to stay. There were too many patients and not enough medics or supplies to go around especially if the offensive continued much longer. Grace was torn by her own desire to stay and help as she was trained to do and her natural sense of self-preservation that screamed at her to run and not to look back. She was thankful that the British Army had taken that decision out of her hands.

Finally, their work was done. The last load of men were on their way to the rear and Grace and a few other nurses were left behind to wait for a truck to return and send them on to Brussels. Grace found Renee sitting in the chapel helping a man drink from a jug of water. She looked up as Grace approached.

'So you are ready to leave?' she said not accusingly but with the intention still ringing in the air.

'Yes. We'll all be gone before dark.'

'Good.'

'We're just trying to help,' Grace said in a very small voice.

Tears dotted the Belgian woman's grey eyes. 'You can help by staying. You take away 100 men today there will by 200 more tomorrow. I cannot do this alone.'

'Why do you stay?' asked Grace. 'Come with us to Brussels. You're a civilian, you can easily leave like the rest.'

She shook her head determinedly. '_Non_. Bastogne is my home, I will not leave. I don't know how you can after being here and seeing that there are people who need you.'

'It's not our job. Our unit has its orders.'

'Orders. That is why I hate armies. I would not take so many orders.'

'I wish I was as strong as you.' She smiled slightly by way of an apology. 'It was nice to meet you, Renee. I'm sorry but good luck.'

Grace stepped out of the church and into the icy air still haunted by her conversation with Renee. She though about Speirs and Dick and Harry and the rest of Easy and she wondered where they were. If any of them were hurt wouldn't she want to be the one to help them. She thought about Nixon for the first time without shame, only concern. She prayed he would be all right.

'Barnes!' Matron beckoned Grace towards her in a way that she would have considered nervous if she knew Matron to be capable of that emotion. 'Sister,' she said in a low, conspiratorial voice. 'How many girls are left here?'

'Um… five,' Grace answered. 'We're all ready to leave.'

'Yes, well, that doesn't look likely to happen.'

'I'm sorry?'

'It seems that while we have been here the whole area has become almost completely surrounded.'

'Surrounded?'

'Yes, Sister, surrounded.' Matron cleared her throat awkwardly. 'So it seems that evacuating at this point my prove a little difficult.'

Grace's stomach sunk as the consequence of Matron's words sunk in. They were stuck here in this ruined town in the centre of an almost medieval siege with no medical supplies, no winter clothes and very little food. Grace didn't know which of these problems to bring up first.

'And now we have to stay?' She was bitten by the irony of this point.

'Temporarily. Yes. I am just about to inform the others. Unfortunately circumstances mean that you are now second in command. The girls will be upset, you must make sure order is kept.'

Matron marched off and Grace was left to recover from the news. It didn't help turning around and seeing Renee watching her.

Two days past in Bastogne and the 'surrounded' situation did not change. Out in the woods the men dug into their foxholes, back in the town the medics waited and did what they could for the wounded with limited supplies, a result of the horrendous, low, grey sky that engulfed them. No penicillin, little morphine, baleful stores of dried plasma. When they had arrived Renee had told Grace that the bed sheets were now only used to cover the dead and occasionally to bolster the supply of bandages. After a few days even sheets became too precious to waste on the dead and in an act of incredibly painful irreverence the bodies where now simply piled outside the Aid Station, face down so as not to be recognized by any comrades, bloating and freezing as they waited to be buried.

The morning Grace had sent out two orderlies to scour the town for firewood. Nothing could be sterilised without boiling water, no water could be boiled without a fire. She wasn't hopeful, all the trees, benches, fences in the surrounding area had long since been torn apart by the struggling townspeople. Grace herself was on an important mission suggested by Renee. A Hooch Hunt. With dwindling amounts of morphine the only alternative they had was, crude as it sounded, was alcohol. A drunk patient was generally much happier than a sober one. And the one place likely to have the biggest hoard of whiskey, scotch and even champagne was Regiment.

Which led Grace to enter, feeling very small the building on the far side of town (The side furthest from the line) where the plans were made and the Generals discussed. The first person she met was a man, teenager really importantly shuffling papers. He pounced on her immediately.

'What is it?' said the grumpy clerk.

'I need some alcohol.'

He snorted with laughter. 'Join the club, sweetheart.'

'As nice as a drink may be, it's for medical purposes. I'm confiscating the Regiment's whiskey. Anything you've got, I need it.'

He sat up straight in his chair looking alarmed. 'Now look here, miss…'

'It's Sister,' she said forcefully.

'You can't just go demanding things. There are some very important people working here.'

'And I have some equally important people back at the Aid Station without any form of pain relief.' As she was speaking she realised that her snippy reply was completely channelling Matron and tried to rein it in again for fear of turning into a bitter middle-aged woman. 'I'm sorry but we're desperate.'

He looked uncertain and Grace decided that maybe there were some things that Matron was better at than here. 'Look, I don't have time to deal with children. Go and find me someone in charge.'

He bit is a lip nervously but looked relieved when he spotted somewhere behind her. 'Colonel Sink! Uh… Colonel Sink? Sir?'

A strongly built greying man with a heavy moustache stopped. 'What is it, Private?'

'This woman wanted to talk to you.'

Colonel Sink cast her an interested stare. 'And you would be?'

'Sister Barnes. I'm from the Aid Station.'

'Right, right, of course. Colonel Sink.' He stuck out his hand as she tentatively shook it. 'Happy to help our good friends back at the Aid Station, even if they are Brits. Never know when we might need you.'

'Well, we could do with your help now, sir. We've run out of pain relief and I've been sent to requisition all your stocks of alcohol.'

Sink looked a little taken aback. 'All?'

'Ideally.'

'Well, that's gonna be a bit of problem, Sister. See, goddamnit, my men they like a bit of hooch ward off the cold before they go do their fighting.'

'I understand but my patients need something.'

He thought the proposal through and came to the only conclusion he could. He slowly nodded his head. 'All right. I'll get something together.'

A crate was found and in seemingly no time at all it was filled with all manner of bottles, both full and half full, whiskey, scotch, even the odd British rum ration. Grace suspected it was not all they had, it was well known that many of the higher-ups and Regiment enjoyed a bit of a drink, but it was enough and she would have to be satisfied.

'There you are,' said Colonel Sink. 'There's a fair bit of hooch their. You promise me it's for my men and not just your Christmas party.'

'Thank you,' she said, heaving the box into her arms.

'Anything I can do to help,' he said with the air of a man who was only offering to be polite.

'You could get me some bloody morphine.'

Her exit was somewhat hampered by the fact that the crate was so big she could barely see over it but once she had stumbled a little she managed to regain her purposeful walk.

'Hey, hey, Grace!' Grace couldn't turn around but she didn't need to, she recognized the voice as Nixon's and her insides somersaulted.

'Hi,' she stuttered as he approached, looking as dishevelled as she feared she did and with about a weeks worth of beard darkening his face.

'I heard you yelling at Colonel Sink in there.'

She blushed. 'I wasn't yelling.'

'No. You were getting your point across. Do you want a hand with that?' He made to take the box but she pulled away.

'I don't know if I can trust you with it.'

'What?'

She reached in and pulled out a bottle of Vat 69. 'What would you give for this?'

He smiled wryly. 'My soul.'

'And what would I want with that?'

'Just give me the box.'

Duly, she handed it over. And without it's protection she suddenly felt very vulnerable, there was no barrier between them and the awkwardness of the situation suddenly became blindingly apparent. After all the time she had spent thinking about what she was going to say when she finally saw him again, she realised that she had actually come to any firm decisions.

'What are you doing so close to the line?'

'Believe me it wasn't done on purpose. What are you doing away from the line?'

He rolled his eyes in irritation. 'Trying to get some sense of Colonel Strayer. Every day he comes down the Battalion issue some vague order and disappears back to Christ knows where. It's my job to find out what the hell is going on up here. And to top that we were graced with the presence of the General McAuliffe. Hold the line he says, what's he think we've been doing the past week?'

'You have to just stick out.'

'Yeah.'

The conversation drifted into silence and they were left with the sound of the boots crunching in the snow as they walked back towards the Aid Station. After a few minutes Grace felt that she had to say something.

'Look, I didn't properly thank you for um…' She searched for a way to phrase the statement without sounding as if it were thanks for any kind of sexual favours. 'Being there, for me you know, after Robbie…'

'Oh, it's fine,' he said. 'Look, we had sex, right?'

Grace came to a jarring halt in the road. 'Umm… Yes. I was there.'

'Right. I'm sorry. I like you, I didn't want to take advantage or make things awkward…'

'You're very forward, aren't you?' said Grace musingly.

'_I'm _forward? May I remind you that you're the one who came into _my _room.'

Grace blushed more furiously than she had ever done before at the mention of her massive personality transplant. She was confident, yes, she flirted, she smiled but she had never, ever gone further than that until that night with Nixon. 'I'm so sorry. Really, you must think I'm a dreadful person throwing myself at a married man. It's not what I usually do, honest.'

'I wouldn't worry so much about the married thing. My wife doesn't figure.'

'Please, don't tell anyone.'

He blinked in surprise and confusion. 'I wouldn't. I haven't. Do you think I'd have survived this long if I had? You got a few friends back in the Company who would gladly show their displeasure if they ever found out.'

'So we can go back to normal?'

'Yeah.'

Grace breathed a sigh of relief and reached up and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Nixon looked shocked for a moment but quickly gathered himself. 'There you go throwing yourself at me again.'

'Shut up.'

They continued their short walk back to the Aid Station but as they approached and saw the people buzzing about the building she suddenly stopped and grabbed his arm.

'I'll be all right from here,' she insisted, she did not want anyone seeing Nixon and putting two and two together.

'You sure?'

He handed her back the heavy box and turned to leave.

'Nix!' she called and reaching into the box she pulled out a bottle and tossed it to him. He caught it deftly, looking down at the label with confused delight. 'It's a Christmas present.'

He smiled and walked away leaving Grace to try and work out why her heart was beating so fast.


	16. Chapter 16

**This chapter is dedicated to Volleyball Babe22 and EmmyMK who's really kind reviews reminded me that Grace existed and that some people were still reading this. Cheers!**

Grace walked down the stairs into the warmth of the kitchen. Her mother, warm, bright was bent over the oven wrestling with a baking tray. A familiar upbeat tune twisted out of the wireless and Grace's toe tapped along unconsciously to the bouncy music.

'Merry Christmas, love.' Her mother didn't look up from the oven.

'Merry Christmas, Mum. Do you need any help?'

'Don't trouble yourself, pet.' she brushed her away. 'Everyone's in the other room.'

Grace left the steamy kitchen and crossed into the living room. Dad was behind the newspaper. Lillian sat on the floor amidst a pile of paper chains, all colours, red, yellow, blue, green. She methodically cut out strips and rolled the paper, making the chain longer and longer. Grace sat beside her and reached for a pair of scissors.

'How long have you been working on this?' she asked.

Lillian smiled. 'It feels like all night but I don't mind. They'll look lovely on the tree.'

The baby rolled loosely on the floor, his little limbs still soft like jelly but his wide blue eyes regarding Grace seriously.

'Do you think he knows it's Christmas?'

Lillian tickled the baby's stomach fondly and he giggled, it was a sweet bubbly sound. 'Oh, he knows something's going on. He's sharp as a knife, this one.'

'And cute as a button too. Does he have a name yet?'

'Not yet but soon. I'll think something up.'

There was a loud bang on the stairs. Grace's head jerked up at the sound of the thundering noise but her father didn't move, he hadn't even turned the page and Lillian looked unconcerned. 'It's just Robbie,' she said. 'He's bringing the presents down. Grace, are you all right?'

'Yes. It's just…' Grace couldn't get the words out her teeth were chattering and her body was moving in uncontrollable spasms. Looking down at her fingers she saw they were splayed and ridged, too cold to even move without shattering like glass. 'Lily, my hands are blue.'

Grace wrenched herself from sleep with great reluctance. It was the morning of the 24th December and Maggie was shaking her awake.

'What?' she grunted.

'Get out of the chair,' Maggie said. 'And hand over the blanket. It's my turn to sleep, I've been up all bloody night.'

Grace reluctantly rolled off the hard wooden chair that had served as her sleeping post for the past couple of hours. She looked down at her hands. They were chapped and pale and the nails were completely buggered but they weren't quite blue yet.

'Did it snow last night?' she asked.

'It's still night,' Maggie grunted, wrapping herself in the army supplied blanket. She placed a cigarette between her lips and forced her icicle fingers to snap the lighter. 'But I'll bet you any money the sky won't have cleared by morning. Here.'

She passed over the cigarette and Grace took a grateful drag. The rough smoke scraping her lungs and warmed her. 'Thanks.'

'You better get downstairs now. The Belgian girl, Renée, I don't think she sleeps and she doesn't expect anyone else to either. Give me a couple of hours and I'll be down too.'

Since beginning her training as a nurse almost four years ago Grace had learnt that there were many reason for taking up the career path. In a time of war there was the sense of doing your bit for King and country, in some dramatic case some girls did it in memory of a dead brother, husband, boyfriend. In less dramatic circumstances she had found some who had only joined up for the smart looking uniform. In Grace's case it had been a longing for adventure, a chance to see the world. She'd certainly found that. There were very few women in the wartime nursing profession that Grace had come across that were natural born nurses. They did their jobs well and bravely, they took care of the men as best they could but they weren't born for the job. Not like Renee.

A touch from the pretty Belgian woman could lift the weight off a dying man, her smile was like a shot of morphine and she moved through the church like an angel.

She had many admirers one of them included Eugene Roe who appeared in the Aid Station a couple of days after their arrival in Bastogne. Gene had always been quiet, he didn't drink and laugh with the others, always hanging on the peripheries of a craps game but never joining in. He watched everything with a strange, dark longing. But since arriving in Belgium his shadowed, haunted eyes had all but overwhelmed the rest of his face and his already pale skin had become as white and ghostly as the snow through which he trudged everyday. He was fading away, weighed down by the badge of medic.

But when he had watched Renee that day, his face had brightened up momentarily and he had spoken to her, testing out his heavily accented Bayou French. Renee did that to people. She made men forget that they were soldiers and just for a moment, remember who they used to be.

Renee had made a further friend in Easy Company, in Skinny Sisk, the man that Eugene had brought back with him. Luckily, he wasn't too badly hurt but there was no way he could head any further back from the line to recover, he was stuck just like the rest of them.

Skinny Sisk had a round, endearingly boyish face, a person you could very easily imagine as a child. Right now, propped up on a stretcher with his wounded leg extended and sucking on one of the confiscated bottles of whiskey he looked quite happy with his lot. Trigger had also taken a fancy to him and was curled up around his feet, sharing what hairy warmth he had to offer.

'Hi, Skinny. I'm Grace. How are you doing today?' She said the words mechanically with an almost automatic smile.

'Fine. Great apart from my leg which hurts like a sonofa… It hurts a lot.'

'Well, you were the big man who said no morphine.'

'Yeah, I guess.' He smiled contritely. 'Where'd the French girl go?'

'She's Belgian.'

'She's nice.'

'Fancy your luck do you? Typical, a pretty face and a bottle of whiskey and you're sold.'

Grace ran her fingers through the dog's shaggy coat affectionately. She had never been much of a dog person but she had come to agree with the general consensus which was that he was probably the best dog in the whole of the ETO. 'How's our Trigger been treating you?' she asked the dog's current best friend.

Skinny looked at him fondly, the tiny movement causing him to wince. 'Oh, I like him fine. It's like wearing a big heavy blanket.'

Grace stared down at the blood blossoming through the bandages. It was almost pretty. She shuddered it had been so long since she had seen anything legitimately beautiful she was beginning to see beauty where there was none. In a world without colour there was something aesthetically pleasing about bright crimson blood staining pure white bandages. She was going mad.

'I have to find some more bandages,' she said shaking off the numbing feeling of suddenly stepping out of her own body.

'I'm OK,' Skinny shrugged. 'I won't bleed to death. Will I?'

'I doubt it.'

Returning with what she could spare from the dwindling box of coarse, clean sheets and her fake smile slathered back upon her face, Grace continued her treatment of Skinny.

The old bandages around his shrapnel wound, luckily weren't two bloody and, impossibly it looked like the leg was healing with minimal medical intervention. The only thing that they could hope for was that it wouldn't go sceptic as with dwindling supplies of penicillin, the slightest infection could sign a man's death warrant. She completed her inspection with a quick peck on the cheek and a wink that tickled his ears bright red. Flirting was the number one weapon in her First Aid arsenal. She knew the men would much rather prefer being treated by a bright girl who would smile and chat about the mindless, pretty things that still existed outside of this sphere of destruction they were living in, than someone like the bleak Army surgeon, Major Jones. He didn't even try to pretend for the sake of the men they were treating, he was too submerged in his own dark tunnel of misery to even consider being the light in anyone else's.

He also hated Trigger. As a peacetime doctor he still clung to the old bureaucracy of a real hospital, which included the rule "no pets". When they had first arrived, Maggie had joked that Trigger would one day most likely end up as someone's dinner, no one would be surprised if it was Major Jones' plate he appeared on.

Trigger growled low in his throat as the surgeon slouched, heavy and flat-footed with exhaustion, towards them. He pushed past Grace to grab the dog by the scruff of the neck and force him off Skinny's bed.

'Oh, Doc!' groaned Skinny at the loss of his living blanket.

'Don't "Doc", me!' he said firmly before turning to Grace. 'Nurse, do you think it hygienic to have a dog lying across a leg wound? A mangy, stray, who God knows where…'

'He's not mangy,' Grace insisted. 'Trigger's been with us since Holland and he hasn't given anyone rabies or anything so far.'

'Outside!'

'I hardly think one very docile dog is the biggest of our hygienic problems, Major Jones.' Matron was nearly a foot shorter than the gangly American but she spoke with the firmness of tone that told you when something was not up for discussion. 'Perhaps when you've done something about the infestation of rats eating their way through the supply room, then we'll turn our attention to a dog on the ward.'

'But-!' Major Jones spoke to Matron's retreating back and Grace bit back the smile that always tugged at her mouth whenever someone other than her was on the receiving end of Matron's disdain.

True to her word, Maggie was back down in the chapel in a couple of hours to replace Dorothea, who slept all through the morning after the night shift. Maggie shuffled through the rows of pallets looking more like the living dead than the wounded. Her eyes were darkly circled, her skin pale and waxy, blonde curls limp without their usual night's sleep in tight pin curls. Sooner than Grace would have liked, Maggie had disappeared from duty again. She often did this, sloping off for a sly cigarette out in the frosty air where no one would find her, or in the store rooms where she could pretend she was looking for something if anyone caught her out. It was Maggie's innate laziness, and though she was her friend Grace couldn't help but find it annoying. And if Matron noticed she would certainly be a little more than annoyed.

Maggie was in the supply room bent over some mostly empty boxes. Grace bounded in, in her usual bull in a china shop way, oblivious to the fact that the other girl's shoulders were shaking.

'Morning, Mags. Is there any coffee?' There was a slight sniffle from Maggie before she answered, even the word sniffle seemed so unlike Maggie that Grace instantly knew something was wrong. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing. I'm fine. Please, leave.'

'Are you crying?' Grace tried to keep the incredulity from her voice.

'No,' insisted Maggie. 'I've just got a cold or maybe the flu. It could quite well be pneumonia.'

'And…?'

'And there's no penicillin left!' Maggie turned and Grace could see her face was red and blotchy. There was a reason Maggie didn't cry, it was not a flattering look. 'There's nothing! What am I supposed to do?'

'Light them a cigarette and hold their hand. Just pretend it's all right.'

'I'm sick of pretending!' Maggie snapped. Her tears were drying now she had someone to direct her anger at. 'All of this…' She gestured to the half-empty boxes of torn bed sheets and the icicles clinging to the inside of the stained glass windows and the ancient dust, thick over every surface. 'I'm done with it!'

She threw herself out of the small room, crashing the door behind more for effect than because they ever actually kept it closed, leaving Grace with eyebrows raised up to her hairline. She loved Maggie just as much for tempestuous personality as her hidden empathy and compassion, but it was at times when Grace was working so hard to keep everything together that she wished Maggie would try just as hard. Did Maggie ever consider that Grace was also struggling to control her own emotions, with everything bubbling so close to the surface.

Her fake good mood instantly evaporated and Grace grabbed the box of bandages she had been looking for, with enough force to rip the cardboard and followed Maggie's angry hurricane path back onto the ward.

Grace worked all through the day and most the night, not getting a chance to rest again until the early hours of the day that in the civilised world would be called Christmas Eve. She didn't dream again, rather it seemed that the minute she closed her eyes they were being shaken open again. Dorothea's round, flushed face was indecently close to hers, eyes bright with something that might be classed as excitement but which Grace was still too tired to properly register.

'It's my turn to sleep,' she growled.

'There's no time to sleep!' exclaimed Dorothea. 'It's stopped snowing. The sky's clear again. The planes have been in!'

Grace stepped outside to be greeted by a more beautiful sight than she could ever have thought possible. A crisp, clear blue sky filled with small white parachutes twisting gracefully towards the ground. It was like Christmas as a child, rushing to the window to see the first snow. People dashed into the street hungrily falling upon the boxes, others emerged from windows pulling down the risers wound around chimney pots.

Maggie stood next to her and together they watched the sky falling. 'Pretty, isn't it?' commented her friend.

'Uh huh.'

'Don't you dare tell anyone I was crying this morning.'

'Wouldn't dream of it.'

'If you do I will give you something to fucking cry about.'

'Don't worry your reputation as a cold-hearted bitch is safe.'

The day was a relatively good one. The supply packages contained not only much needed medicines but also luxuries like cigarettes and chocolate, American chocolate of course which was always to sweet and stingy on the diary but it gave them all the necessary sugar rush needed to keep working. After that they all kept two or three bars in their pockets in case of moments of fatigue. Life at the Aid Station was looking up and, with the clear skies above it didn't look long before back-up would arrive and the siege on Bastogne would be over. Matron continually insisted that they would all be celebrating New Year in style in Brussels. Grace had once thought that this was just a line to keep morale up, now she was beginning to hope that it might be true.

Then the next wave of casualties rode up and the mood soured. German tanks had broken through the line and there were large numbers of wounded and dead being dragged up to the town. One of those was another Easy Company man, Smokey Gordon, which always depressed Grace. Even though she didn't know him well, even a vaguely familiar face on a man she was treating made it hard for her to concentrate.

Renee hadn't slept the night before and it was a rare sight to see her even sit down, so Grace was relieved when she saw her slip out with Eugene Roe, who had come up from the line with stretcher bearers who had brought Gordon. There was no way Grace could begrudge either of them their moment of quiet. She recognised the need to simply cling on to someone.

Gradually night fell and, perhaps in deference to the slowly approaching hours of Christmas morning, everything fell quiet. Dorothea, Maggie and Grace gathered in the cold store room and breaking into their new bars of chocolate shared their ideas of a perfect Christmas.

'Next Christmas,' said Dorothea dreamily. 'The war will be over and Malcolm and I will be married. Our own home, with our own Christmas tree. Of course, I'll have to learn how to cook a turkey but how difficult can it be? And hopefully I'll be as big as a house…'

'What, you want to be fat?' asked Maggie, through an indelicate mouthful of chocolate.

'No, pregnant! We're going to have six children, so I figure we'd better start soon.'

Maggie scoffed at the very idea that anyone would ever want to be a mother. 'Fine then, Maggie,' Grace intervened. 'Christmas next year, where are you going to be?'

'Well, that's easy; sipping champagne at the Savoy. Preferably with a fabulously wealthy lover.'

'And where will you be finding this fabulously wealthy lover? I don't see many around?'

Maggie smiled assuredly. 'Oh, I'm sure there are a few secret millionaires hidden in there somewhere. I'm not fussed, as long as they've got money.'

'And what about that scruffy Yank I spied you sneaking around with in Mourmelon?' exclaimed Dorothea. 'I suppose he has secret millions stashed away somewhere as well?'

Grace's interest was instantly peaked by Maggie's flushed face. 'What?'

'It was just once!' exclaimed Maggie.

'I've definitely seen you with him more than once.'

Grace stood up brushing the chocolate crumbs off her uniform. 'Right, stay here. When I get I will be hearing about your mystery man. But we've run out of chocolate.'

She dashes out of the cramped space, made cosy by a good time with her friends and up the stairs to the entrance of the church where she bumped into Renee, still working.

'Renee, take a break!' she cried. 'It's Christmas soon.'

The other woman looked reluctant. She had an armful of bloodied sheets which was a less than festive decoration and her blue headscarf was slipping from her head. 'Perhaps in a moment. When the men are all asleep.'

'Well, that's never going to happen. Let me take those.' She edged the sheets from Renee's resisting fingers and heaved them into her own arms. 'We were just talking about next Christmas, when the wars over and we all get to go home and celebrate with our families. Do you have any family, Renée? Or are they…?' she trailed off realizing how personal the simple question was under the circumstances.

'I have no family,' she said plainly.

'Sorry. My brother died recently too.' Grace decided to change the subject. 'I saw you outside with Gene Roe.'

'Yes.'

'He likes you. I caught him staring at you earlier.'

The faintest hint of a blush began spreading across her cheeks. 'I don't have time for things like that.'

'Do you already have a man? A husband or a boyfriend?'

'I did.'

'Oh.'

'I feel… Now, there is no use in falling in love. It only hurts more when your man gets killed.'

'Well, then you Gene have something in common, he thinks the same way. It's stupid, it only means you end up lonely. You can't be afraid forever.'

'No. Just until the war is over. And you? The way you smile and tease these boys I am sure you must have a thousand men between London and Brussels all falling over themselves for you.'

Grace laughed when she thought of the woeful state of her romantic relations. For all the men who winked and told her she was pretty, for all the men who kissed her and danced with her and, most recently, took her to bed, they all had very little follow through, much less falling over themselves for her affection. She shook her head not sadly but with resignation. 'No one.'

Shaking herself loose from melancholy thoughts she tried to muster up a bright smile. 'Listen, I'll take these downstairs and you go and get some chocolate. Apparently, Maggie's got a new admirer she's very eager to keep secret.'

Renee nodded in appeasement and Grace, with a forced skip in her step ran back down the stairs. But she had only just reached the bottom when the thundering tone of an air raid siren shattered the evening's lull.

Inevitably there was a moment of stillness as if they had all been frozen by the noise before the desperate activity that was to follow. Maggie and Dorothea appeared out of the store room, suddenly shaken out of their inertia, and Matron was summoned out of nowhere and quickly began snapping orders. They were in the basement so there was nowhere safer that they could be moved but as an extra precaution those men that could be were rolled under the beds and tables.

In the confusion, Grace felt Dorothea dashing up the spiralled stairs onto ground level. Without thinking, Grace followed her. At the top of the stairs, the dull thuds of distant explosions became loud screeches and they could smell the fires burning outside.

'Dorothea! Where are you going?'

'Trigger,' she gasped. 'That stupid dog has just run outside!'

'Leave him,' insisted Grace. 'He'll be fine.'

But Dorothea was already running towards he door completely mindless of the hellish flashes of light streaking the night's sky.

'Dorothea!'

'Where does Sister Johnson think she's going?' asked Matron, not quite running up the stairs but moving as fast as a dignified woman could.

'To get the dog,' Grace answered helplessly.

Matron shook her head angrily. 'Silly girl.' And ran out after her.

Grace opened and closed her mouth several times as shock kept her rooted to the spot. Luckily the appearance of Renee dashing down from the upper levels shook her awake.

'Renee! What do we…?'

Before the question could fall out of Grace's mouth of Renee could make it over to the stairwell, there was an incredible crash, and the ceiling fell in.

**A/N: Sorry again for my complete crapness : (**


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Coming to was a slow, jerky process. Senses slotting into place one by one. First came hearing, sounds of gunfire and screams breaking through a static whine, then the astringent strench of smoke and the taste of dust thick in her mouth. It took a while to realise that in order to see she needed to open her eyes, her eyelids were so heavy but when she finally did Grace was able to piece together what had happened to her fragile body. She had been tossed across the room like a rag doll, finding a home against the opposite wall on a bed of rubble.

Pain was the final piece of the jigsaw and when it hit it took a while for her cotton wool brain to give it a name. With a few deep breaths she managed to calm herself down enough to do a preliminary inventory of her own body; a pounding, bleeding head probably only superficially injured but she needed to watch for signs of concussion; bruising and light shrapnel cuts over her exposed forearms, again only superficial; heavier brusing on her chest making sudden breaths in a bit of a pain but not so much as to suggest that anything was broken. She was fine. Mostly.

She had been fortunately placed, the arch of stairwell shielding her, forming a protective cubby. Behind her the stairs down to the basement were completely blocked with debris. Ahead she could see that the ground floor of the church was all but demolished. She was trapped in a very small space and on her own.

'Help!' she screamed suddenly. The word burst out of her. 'Help! Help! I'm in here!'

'Alright, keep your hair on.' It was Maggie's voice and a second latter some rubble was pushed away and she could see a slim arm reaching towards her. 'We can all hear you. Hold on a second, I'll get some of the boys to shift this.'

One by one, each heavy ceiling fragment was slowly shifted away until there was a large enough hole for Grace to crawl through with some assistance from Major Jones. Maggie was their waiting for her looking smudge and unkempt but otherwise okay.

'Are you alright?' she asked, more concerned than Grace had ever seen her.

'Fine. I'm fine,' Grace replied as an assurance to herself more than anyone. Her hands were shaking.

'Good. It's just… One minute you were there and then you just weren't.'

Later she would be touched by Maggie's concern. Presently she turned to Major Jones. 'What's going on?'

'Sounded like we took a direct hit,' he answered firmly but even his cold efficiency seemed to be shaken. 'But the basement looks to be structurely secure, these old churches, they're built to last, so it's safest to hang on here until they sound the all-clear.'

'But Matron and Dorothea, they went outside after that fucking dog.'

'They probably found shelter topside then,' said Maggie with enough certainty to allay Grace's fears. She didn't really want to think about any alternative. 'We'll meet up with them once the all clear's sounded.'

'What about Renee?' asked Major Jones.

Grace had last seen her pale white face staring down at her from the top of the stairwell, a blink of an eye later and that space had been a pile of collapsed roof beams; she knew what that meant for Renee's chances.

'She's probably dead,' she told the others in as matter-of-fact tone as she could manage.

While Maggie and Major Jones had been digging and while Grace had been waiting for her rescue the thud of the barrage had dulled and moments later the moan of the all-clear whistled through the town. Maggie and Grace exhanged a wordless look and, as if on an agreed signal both dashed out the backdoor into the night. Major Jones shouted after them.

'We're going to catch hell for that later,' Maggie gasped in the raw air.

'Later,' said Grace. 'Let's find Dorothea first.'

The fact that Bastogne had been in such poor shape to begin with probably worked in its favour from an aesthetic point. A little bit more rubble did no harm to the town and the biggest architectural tragedy was the church which was a pity as it had once stood so tall and firm amidst the carnage. But the sirens and people alike were wailing and nearly everyone they met was streaked with blood and dust.

Maggie grabbed a passing paratrooper literally by the scruff of the neck. 'Have you got an Aid Station set up?'

He nodded towards the corrugated church. She rolled her eyes. 'I mean besides that.'

'There's a house back up the main street where we're taking the wounded.' He gestured vaguely

They followed his directions until they came to a large-ish house in the centre of town where Army personnel buzzed around like olive drab ants. Someone had taken the time to hang a Red Cross out of one of the upper storey windows and while it was big enough to be seen from the air no one was under any illusions that it would protect them – it hadn't worked for the church.

The two girls seperated, taking separate floors to help where they could and ostensibly to see if they could scout out Matron or Dorothea. As Maggie had said, even if they hadn't been wounded they'd be here making trouble.

Grace pushed her way through the bodies searching each make shift bed for a familiar female face. Some she had to stop on longer than others before she could assure herself that the twisted mask of pain was a stranger. It was callous but needed to be done. But callous was not really in Grace's nature, and before long she had accepted a needle and thread from an orderly and was stitching a young man's blasted arm, picking out large splinters of wood from what looked like a ceiling beam. It was dirty painful work and luckily the boy had passed out which meant she could dig around in his arm with her tweezers with a little less finesse.

'Barnes.'

The voice was like the creaking of an old door beneath the noise of the house. It called a second time before Grace fully registered and took notice of it. She turned and saw –

'Matron!'

The older woman lay a little further off just cast on the ground with the rest for there were no beds. She was white as marble and waxey with it, her skin sickly, lips dry and hair grey with dust. No wonder she had missed her, she would have passed her off as an elderly Belgian civillain had she glanced her way.

Grace crawled over and knelt beside her. 'Matron, are you alright? What-?'

Matron nodded downwards and Grace saw that her left leg was covered by a thick blanket which was even now stained with blood from the wound beneath it. Grace instantly knew it was serious, had it not been she would have been scolded for asking stupid questions. Gently she lifted the blanket.

With a dispassionate medical eye she could quickly surmise that the leg could not be saved. It was a crush injury and should have been amputated at the scene, now there was a danger of blood poisoning depending on how long the limb had been trapped. To take the damn thing off below the knee was the only course of action. But she wasn't wearing that dispassionate eye. She had undertaken dozens of amputations as a nurse but here was the woman who had helped her with her first on that very first day in France fresh off the ferry from Portsmouth. This was the woman who had told her to pull herself together and who had held down the boy while Grace had pushed the saw through bone for the first time and swallowed back the urge to vomit. So instead she said.

'Well, this doesn't look to bad. If we could just…'

'I may be laid up, Sister Barnes but don't you dare take me for an idiot. I know perfectly well what is going on with my leg.'

And there was Matron. Grace was selfishly relieved; relieved that she wasn't alone and spared the task of breaking the dreadful news. When these types of things occurred, the patient often begged for their limb, crying that life without their arm or leg wasn't worth living, that they'd rather died. Grace didn't know what she do if she ever saw Matron cry.

'It needs to go,' continued Matron. 'I told the lad who dug me out it needed to go but he didn't listen. I shan't get sentimental over the old thing, no use in that.'

'Of course,' Grace agreed mutely.

'You will have to do the deed for me. I trust you don't require me to talk you through it?'

Grace shook her head numbly.

'Good, because I expect I shall be very much out of it. I'm sending you off to find some morphine. A considerable amount, please.'

As she always did where Matron was concerned, Grace dashed off to do as she was told. She collected the equipment she would need; morphine, a surgical saw and a company medic to hold her down if the morphine didn't take proper effect. When she returned she quickly injected the morphine directly into the vein. As she watched Matron's eyes slowly lose focus a new thought occurred to her, one that appalled her for not having considered it before.

'Matron.' She shook her to fight the dulling effects of the morphine. 'Matron, what happened to Dorothea? To Sister Johnson? Did you see?'

She shook her again, harder. 'Poor girl,' she mumbled and Grace had to bend her ear close to her mouth the catch the words. 'Crushed. Completely crushed. Probably best off out of it.'

Half way through the operation, with the saw caught in the bone Grace's arms grew tired of sawing and she passed the task on to the medic. Her hands were covered in blood but there was no where to wash them so she went outside and scrubbed them in the snow. Her hands turned the flakes pink. Somehow the news of Dorothea's death had rendered her partial deaf. Everything buzzed and it all seemed as if things were coming at her from very far away. She stared up at the sky, it was clear and paradoxically that made it seem as if it were closer than ever, as if she could reach up and touch the stars. That made her laugh and the tears choked out soon after that.

There was a second bombardment some time past midnight, just when the fires of the previous attack had finally been staunched. There were fewer casualties the second time around as they had already identfied the strongest buildings in which to take shelter and the attack was much shorter, maybe not even a second attack but a bomber lost along the way and deciding to join the party late. Grace worked until she could no longer see straight and the sun was tinging the sky on the next morning before she was able to take a break and light a cigarette.

She took stock of what they had lost that night; three nurses – for Matron while still alive and relatively stable would certainly die if they were not able to evacuate soon, and three friends. Her hand shook as she took a long drag of smoke. It took a while to realise that rather than blankly staring at the snow in front of her, she was actually blankly staring at a pair of jump boots. Her gaze trailed up to land on Eugene Roe. The trials of the night had made him monochromatic; skin completely white and eyes completely black like hollows in his face. Around his wrist was twisted Renee's blue scarf. Grace wondered how long he'd been standing there wordlessly staring at her and she stared some more this time at the little blue scarf.

He seemed embarrassed by it, or maybe just conscious. Pulling it from his wrist to twist around his fingers. 'She's dead.'

She'd heard that a lot tonight. 'I know.'

Without invitation he sat down beside her and pulled out his own packet of cigarettes. They were an American brand and better quality than her own, she could smell it in the smoke. Like her, blood had dried into the creases of his palms and was smearing on the skin of the cigarette paper. Renee's scarf lay silently between them.

'What are you doing up here?' she asked.

'Bringing a casualty up from the line. Lieutenant Welsh.'

'Oh my God. Is he okay?' Another piece of bad news and she might not be able to pick herself up again.

'Some shrapnel to the leg. He'll be back with a limp in a few weeks.'

'Thank you,' in a whisper to God more than Roe.

'I wasn't in love with her.'

Grace was blind sided by the sudden change in topic. 'What?'

'Renee. I wasn't… we weren't… you know.'

'Oh, of course. I'd never thought.'

'I just needed a friend,' he said quietly. 'I don't have many of those.'

Grace turned to face him properly now and said very firmly, 'Well, that's ridiculous. There's a whole Company's worth of men out there who consider themselves your friend.'

He smiled ruefully. 'Okay, I have friends, just a lot of the time I don't want them.'

'I know. More trouble than they're worth especially on nights like this.' Grace had grown old under the weight of the worry she held for her friends. She had had sleepless nights and fretful days, almost torn her hair out as she wondered whether they were alive of dead, and when they did die she had cried until her eyes were raw. But still, to say that they were more trouble than they were worth was a stupid lie. Dorothea had been beautiful, completely unaffected like no one Grace had ever met before. All the tears she had cried and would cry for her were definitely an even price for all the times the girl had made her laugh until her stomach ached.

'Oh, I forgot, Captain Nixon asked me to give you this.' He handed her an envelope which if it had been any of the other Easy Company boys would have been steamed open already. Gene was a good choice of messenger; if he had any questions about the correspondence he'd keep them to himself and, as he'd said he had no friends who he'd gossip with. 'You know, if I came up here and happened to see you.'

Grace tucked it in her pocket for later and promptly put it out of her mind.

As they finished their cigarettes and moved without pause straight on to their second the distant sound of singing could be heard somewhere in the town, a mournful rendition of _Silent Night_. Grace had never heard a more depressing Christmas carol.

Maggie stepped out of the Aid Station and threw herself beside Grace, taking the just lit cigarette from her hand. 'Christ, what have they got to sing about?'

'It's Christmas,' Grace answered.

'Still?'

Grace realised that she hadn't seen Maggie for hours and wondered if maybe she hadn't heard the news yet. 'Maggie, Dorothea's…'

'Yes, I heard.' She didn't seem to want to say anymore about it. 'And how are you doing this fine evening, Gene? Having a merry Christmas?'

'Yes, thank you, m'am.'

'Lovely.' She paused. 'Oh, I don't believe it.'

'What?'

Grace followed Maggie's nod across the street where she saw a four legged shape scampering across the snow towards them. It was Trigger with not a scratch on him. He barked enthusiastically at them and Grace smiled.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

It was almost New Year before Grace finally opened Nixon's letter. Some days she just forgot about it, living silently in her pocket. There was a lot that required her attention in those hectic days. Luckily, the line held and even managed to push forward enough so that some of the Battalions were able to be relieved and the wounded were evacuated, including Matron who proved herself to be as strong as she looked by not only surviving but thriving with very little medical intervention. Before she left the town to return to England she summoned Grace to her side.

'You'll need to buck up your ideas, Barnes,' she said in a voice which was breathless with pain but still held all its usual force.

_Buck up your ideas. _Grace felt a fraction of annoyance at that. She's been doing nothing but "bucking up her ideas" since she'd met the woman, but because she was wounded and because she was Matron, she responded meekly, 'Yes, Matron.'

'You'll be senior until we receive orders and link back with the rest of the hospital. Your duties will include: keeping the other girls out of trouble; keeping yourself out of trouble, I know your penchant for Americans,' Grace stifled a grin. Matron continued. 'Doing exactly as the Surgeons tell you, unless of course they're talking rubbish in which case you have my permission to ignore them.'

It was obvious to look at Grace's face that she was terrified by the prospect of this new responsibility even if it was only temporary. She had only recently been promoted to Ward Sister and she wasn't at all certain she was even any good at that.

Matron took her hand, which was in itself alarming and said quite evenly, 'I trust you'll be quite alright, Sister Barnes.'

The vote of confidence was a boost to the ego undoubtedly but when the orderlies tossed Matron on a stretcher and into the back of a truck and drove away from Bastogne Grace couldn't help but feel like a small figure completely at sea.

A couple of days after they were on the move to, a few miles back from the line into an established tented Casualty Clearing Station. Again Grace, Maggie and the few other girls were the only nurses there which meant that they pretty much took care of themselves, organising shifts and rotas and generally getting on with things. It was these things that pushed the letter out of her mind.

When she did remember the letter, it was not silent; it yelled to be opened. But she was scared. Opening the letter would also open her up to something she was not yet ready for. He was twenty-six and a married man, she was only twenty-two and this would be her first love affair, if indeed she allowed it to progress that far, for while they had both agreed that it had been one ill-judged night she had no doubt that it could easily become something more if she wanted it to. What she deserved was something safe and straight and uncomplicated. She deserved someone who would be gentle with her, who would understand that she was really just a child with no idea what she was doing.

If she had to pick a lover Dick would have been a good choice. He was quiet and polite, the kind of man who would allow things to develop slowly but with the promise of marriage at the end of it. And her parents loved him. Unfortunately, she was fairly certain that Dick had already decided that she was too frivolous and silly. He'd do well with a girl as steady as he was with no vanities or follies, things which Grace had in spades.

Gene Roe would be another good man to fall in love with, it would be easy. He would allow her to take care of him and she'd enjoy teasing smiles from him. But while he was quiet and restful she knew she was loud and would probably overwhelm him with her personality. The other side of that coin was David Webster, her first flirtation with an Easy Company romance. He was still in England recovering from the wounds gained in Holland but had written to her to say that he would soon be joining them on the front line again. He was so passionate about everything, even in his letters, Grace had no idea how any woman would be able to keep up with the pace at which his brain rattled.

And so there was Nixon, who had a girl back in Aldbourne she knew for certain and probably back in Mourmelon and Reims and a wife who "didn't figure" to boot. It was confusing, she didn't know where she would fit in.

The counter-argument to all this doubt was Dorothea. She had been so in love with her Malcolm, so happy. To have something like that, even for a moment had to be something to strive for. It had to be worth the risk of having her heart broken.

So when Grace did finally sit down on her camp bed in the tented barracks and open the letter after placing so much romantic significance on it, the reality was something of a disappointment. A perfunctory Christmas greeting with a cheap joke about finding someone to kiss under the mistletoe. It wasn't exactly what Grace had pictured when she thought about secret lovers and clandestine correspondences.

She turned the letter over and found a second page covered with his messy pencil scrawl.

_P.S. I thought this might interest you. It just jumped into my head the other night._

_The sea is calm to-night.  
The tide is full, the moon lies fair  
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light  
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;  
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.  
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!  
Only, from the long line of spray  
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,  
Listen! you hear the grating roar  
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,  
At their return, up the high strand,  
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,  
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring  
The eternal note of sadness in._

She frowned. An extract from a poem; that was the sort of thing Webster would write, his letters were often dotted with literary references and quotations that she rarely got. Even when she had had the time she had never been a big reader. It wasn't even a particularly romantic passage, pretty enough but nothing she could use to gage his feelings with. She would ask Maggie, if she weren't the last person on earth she would want to know about whatever it was that was going on with Nixon, besides she probably wouldn't recognise the quote. If Dorothea… She stopped that thought. She would have told Dorothea, that was true. She would have asked her advice and they would have talked through it and, as frustrating as it would have been to relay every detail of the affair several times over to satisfy her friend's curiosity at the end of it she would say exactly the right thing and all Grace's fears would be assuaged.

But she didn't have Dorothea so there was no point in thinking that way.

With a heavy sigh, Grace folded the note and tucked it back into her top pocket and continued on with her day.

But Dorothea wasn't allowed to leave her. As the new, temporary head of the nursing staff it was Grace's job to write her first condolence letter. She had sent a runner to Brussels and the QA frontline headquarters to get details of Dorothea's next of kin and was now attempting to compose a letter to Mr and Mrs Neville Johnson of Charlesworth, Derbyshire.

What was she meant to say? _Dear Mr and Mrs Johnson, your daughter died a hero serving her country._ That was true but it was so impersonal. She wanted to send a letter which told Dorothea's parents that she wasn't just a colleague; she was a friend – a best friend. It had to be sincere, truthful, expressing what really was great about who Dorothea was, but everything she wrote somehow sounded disingenuous.

With a groan her head sank down and landed with a painful whack against the typewriter. 'Ow!'

'You better watch yourself. It wouldn't do for you to wind up a patient.'

She looked up, rubbing her head to find the last person she wanted to witness her accidentally banging her head on a typewriter – Ron Speirs. He viewed her with that look of mild-confusion he always wore when he talked to her, as if she were about to suddenly give way to a bout of unpredictable craziness. He was probably justified in that opinion.

Speirs had been admitted into the Casualty Clearing Station a couple of days ago with a shrapnel wound to the arm and had been making his presence felt on the ward ever since. Grace had never really had much to say about her brother-in-law, her sister loved him and he made Lillian happy which was good enough for her. Spending everyday treating him on her ward she learnt something about Ron Speirs – he was a pain in the arse. It wasn't just her opinion, all the nurses agreed, all those who weren't struck dumb with fear at the mention of his name. No one really wanted to be in the field station, all the patients were either desperate to be shipped back to England or to be given the all clear and sent back to the line, but Speirs _really_ didn't want to there. They had spent the first day he had spent with them doing their best to stop him just getting up and walking out. Since then he had got out of bed every day to come and find Grace and beg her, or get as close to begging as a man like Speirs got, to sign him off as healthy.

He presented his bandaged arm to her without preamble. 'I can flex my fingers.'

'Brilliant. Well done. That's progress.'

'Goddamn that's progress. That's my trigger finger.'

'Another week,' she said firmly.

'No.' He was equally firm. 'I'll walk out of here.'

'And I will get the MPs to drag you right back.'

'You know they've taken my Platoon away from me. Given command to someone else.'

'You say that like it's my fault.' Grace tried to soften her tone. 'Look, I'm doing you a favour, the wound is bad. I would be completely justified in having you evacuated back to a hospital in England. You almost severed a nerve. It could still happen if you move it too much. What would my sister say if I sent you home with a dead arm?'

That shut him up. Mentions of Lillian or the baby often did. It was sweet, she supposed, his way of showing that he thought and cared about them. Just as she didn't want to delve to deeply into Speir's psyche nor did she want to think too much about the ins and outs of his relationship with her sister, considering what a mismatched couple they were it was never going to be traditional.

'How about this? You spend the whole day in bed, not moving your arm, not snapping at nurses, not causing any trouble at all and I might get started on those discharge papers. Deal?'

He was staring. She stopped talking, it was very disconcerting. 'It's _Dover Beach_,' he said.

'What?'

'The poem in your letter. It's a verse from _Dover Beach_ by Matthew Arnold.'

'How did you…?' He nodded to her desk where the letter lay open poem side up. He must have been reading it over her shoulder or upside down while she had been talking. Irritatingly it meant that he hadn't been listening. Even more irritating it meant the he knew that she had someone who would send letters with poems written on the back.

'Oh.' She tried to compose herself and restrain a blush. 'Thank you. I knew that.'

'Sure you did.'

'So what about our deal?'

'Okay.' He turned to leave and she was relieved that at least it was only Ron who had seen the letter. Anyone else would want to talk about or at least speculate about who the sender was. Any speculating he did would stay in his head.

As he left the room she heard him snort, 'Poetry. What a cheap trick. Would've thought better of Nixon.'

'How…?'

Grace didn't have time to ask him how he knew, he had already left to go back to the ward. Now she came to think of it, Ron had been present at a lot of her encounters with Nixon, the man had eyes and he was a lot more observant and intuitive than he let on.

Oh well, it wasn't like she could run out after him and beg him not to say anything. That would only be an admission of guilt.

Still, there was a dull glow in her stomach at the thought of this new information. _Dover Beach_. On the trip to Dover, Nixon had spoken about a poem he had learnt in school, this must be it. Now she knew the title she could read more deeply into its meaning and its intended connotations. It was a reminder of their day together and sign that he didn't want to forget it. It wasn't just sex and leave it at that, it had meant more. He liked her.

She turned back to her type writer and those comforting, sensitive words she was trying to reach for had completely vanished. She felt a twinge of guilt as she spared a thought for Mr and Mrs Neville Johnson of Charlesworth, Derbyshire, but the smile was already on her face and there was nothing she could do about it.

As if she had summoned him just by thinking about him, Nixon appeared at Casualty Clearing Station the very next day. Grace's time on the ward had considerably decreased since she had taken a more administrative role but she was forced to make an exception for Speirs. She was the only one he couldn't reduce to tears and if he did shout at or insult her he always apologised shortly after.

He was biting his tongue this morning as she cleaned his stitches. Every touch to his arm hurt him she knew but he never mentioned it, instead he turned his focus onto another ward. Gazing over her shoulder he suddenly turned on a wolfish smile. Unnerved, Grace followed his eyes and saw Nixon ducking into the tent, taking off his helmet as he did so.

'Well, look who it is,' grinned Speirs.

'You're done!' she said quickly dropping his arm. 'I've got things… a thing… Something to do.'

'Sure you do.'

She could feel him grinning behind her back as she scampered away, tucking herself behind a stack of sheets, not exactly hiding but making herself unnoticeable. It gave her the opportunity to watch Nixon. The fact that he was handsome had never been in any contention. In civilian life, before she had had the opportunity to consider the possibility of real men, Grace had been a fan of Cary Grant, had been drawn to the even lines of his face and neat hair. She had admired the way he wore a suit with ramrod posture and the collected togetherness of his whole appearance. But dishevelment suited Captain Nixon; slightly too long hair left uncombed, a uniform which was too mismatched to be regulation, and so dark that a couple of days without shaving had left him with almost a full beard. He had been clean shaven the last time she had kissed him and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him now.

His eyes moved around the tent and from the way his eyes lit up when they landed on her she could tell he had been looking for her. It was thrilling. She picked up a pile of sheets unnecessarily just so she could look like she was doing something and they met halfway across the ward.

'Hey,' he said, with a small lopsided smile. 'You busy?'

'Well…' She indicated the armful of sheets which should imply that she was rushed off her feet.

'But surely you need a break. I hear you're CO now, you've got the power to make these calls.'

'Okay. Give me five minutes.'

Five minutes to tidy her hair in the stockroom. He would know she had done it but being at least a little bit pretty would give her confidence.

He was outside smoking when she finally came to find him. His broad smile which was just a flash before he tamed it into his usual nonchalance, however, did more to her confidence than any quick glance in the mirror could do.

He offered her a cigarette lit from the butt of his own as she sat on a stack of supply crates beside him.

'What are you doing here?'

Nixon shrugged. 'Oh, I was up at Battalion seeing what passes for intelligence round here. Didn't want to head straight back to the line, you know Dick, he's a great guy but sharing a foxhole, you want your own space. Thought I'd go for a bit of a wander.'

'Isn't that about five miles out of your way?'

'Maybe.'

'You came to see me.'

'Maybe.' Being caught out didn't seem to embarrass him. 'Did you get my letter?'

It was still in her top pocket. Grace grinned stupidly. 'You wrote me a poem.'

'No, Matthew Arnold wrote you a poem, I just wrote it down. There's another verse all about love and fate and Sophocles looking out over the Aegean that sort of reminds me of you but I couldn't remember it to write it down.'

Grace frowned. 'I remind you of Sophocles? Was he the one with the eye-gouging?'

'He wrote other stuff too.'

'Is this what they teach you at Yale? How to impress girls with poetry.'

'It impressed you?' He smiled. 'Good. I was worried you might think it was just pretentious.'

'Well, that too.'

'I remember at school when we read the poem, the professor was saying how it's a presentation of the doom of modern man in the face of the Industrial Revolution, but then he wrote it on his honeymoon. The way I figure it, he can't have been very much in love if his wife's there in bed and all he's thinking about is the Industrial Revolution. You know, unless everyone's reading it wrong.'

"_What were you thinking about on your honeymoon?"_ Was the question tripping on the edge of her lips but she caught herself. Had he been so in love with Kathy then that he'd forgotten everything else? Or even then had he started regretting the marriage? She decided she didn't want to know.

'So,' she steered the conversation away from the topic of wives. 'Your expensive university education wasn't a complete waste of time.'

He laughed. 'Not if spend any time talking to my father.'

'Oh so, the poor little rich boy's got issues with his father as well. What on earth am I getting myself into?'

'I don't know. You can back out now if you want.

'Back out of what?' She knew what he was suggesting, she'd have to be an idiot not to, but she wanted it to be explicit.

'You want me to do it properly, huh? Buy you a corsage and ask you to be my girl?'

'Well, I'm a very proper girl,' she said. 'You can lose the corsage though.'

'Fine.' He made an exaggerated play of taking her hands in his and looking deep into her eyes. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing in his face at the mock seriousness of it all. 'Grace Barnes, will you please, _please_ do me the honour of being my girl?'

She pretended to think, umming and ahhing as she hadn't already been lost the moment she'd set eyes on him again. 'Alright. I accept, Lewis Nixon, I will be your girl.' He leaned in to kiss her but she stopped him with a finger over his lips. 'But, you have to promise me I'll be the only one. On this side of the Atlantic,' she amended.

'I promise. You will be the only one.' The seriousness wasn't a game anymore, it was real and sincere. Grace believed him. When he leaned in for a kiss the second time she let him. It fulfilled her expectations of what kissing a man with a beard would be like. Slightly rough, slightly tickly but it was still Nixon kissing the same way beneath it, tasting of whiskey and smoke. It was something she could get used to and the thought made her smile into his mouth.

He broke away but not very far. 'What?'

'Nothing. Just you're quite a good kisser.'

'It's taken a lot of practice.'

She gave him a shove for that before glancing at the watch hanging on her pocket. Her break had definitely lasted more than five minutes. 'I've got to go.'

He pulled her down for another kiss which would have gone on if she hadn't have had the self-discipline to wriggle out of his arms. They said goodbye properly and parted, he to hunt down a jeep to take him back to the line and she scampering back to her tented ward hoping no one had seen her.

'Excuse me! Excuse me, Grace? Is it?'

The familiar cadence of a British accent in soft South Lancashire tones stopped her short, it had been so long since she had heard anything but rough American voices. She turned and found a young man in the uniform of a British paratrooper complete with maroon beret, unusual in this part of Belgium were the fighting had been mostly led by the Americans. But it was the face of the man which confused her, it was worryingly familiar. Tall and blonde with a wide open face and very handsome, she couldn't quite place him in the context in which he was meant to be.

'Sorry,' he said, still smiling. 'You probably don't remember me. My name's Malcolm Fletcher.'

**Thanks to readxme for reviewing. I completely understand if no one else is reading this because of my crazy long hiatus but if you've got any comments about the story please let me know! x**


	19. Chapter 19

_**Thanks for the reviews and for reading, guys! **_

_**To thank you here is an extra grim chapter in which literally zero good things happen anyone. Sorry!**_

Chapter 19

'We met at the Peebles all rank dance about… well, it must've been a million years ago now.'

It had been a million years ago, it had been 10 months and a life time ago. The man Dorothea had introduced her to in a happy whirl and who three months later had informed everyone and anyone who cared to listen that she was going to marry.

'Oh,' she said simply. 'Dorothea's…'

'Yes, Dorothea's. I had no idea where you'd be; her last letter said Belgium and while it's a small country, it's still bloody big enough, but there was a rumour going round that there were some English girls camped up here and I thought I'd take a look. I saw you and knew I was in the right place.' His smile faltered probably because of the look of unchecked horror that was etched over Grace's face. 'I am in the right place, aren't I?'

Grace nodded mutely. 'Come inside. I'll just… I'll just…'

And she dashed off inside the ward. She glanced up and down the rows for Maggie but couldn't see her anywhere. She knew she was supposed to be on the wards this morning because she was the one who had written up the rota.

She found her in the store tent, drenching the clean sheets and bandages in cigarette smoke. Maggie looked up startled as she opened the door on her.

'What are you doing here?' Grace snapped sharply.

She gestured vaguely to her cigarette with no admission to shame.

'Nevermind,' Grace said, dropping the tent flap behind them and casting them into shadow. 'We have a huge problem. You'll never guess who's here.'

'Gary Cooper?'

'No…'

'Ronald Reagan?'

'It was a rhetorical question, I don't actually mean guess!'

'Oh. Well, tell me who's here then.'

'Malcolm Fletcher.'

That got Maggie's attention. She looked at her with actual interest now, eyes widening in alarm. 'You mean, Dorothea's...?'

'Yes.'

'And he doesn't…?'

'No.' Grace shook her head in distraction. She had a blinding headache building behind the eyes when only ten minutes ago she had felt as light and carefree as anything. 'Her parents must have only just got the telegram. He's just come off the line in Bure with a mind for surprising her, sweeping her off her bloody feet. I'm going to have to tell him. How do I tell him?'

Maggie looked thoughtful. 'I'll do it.'

'What? No!'

'Give me a reason why I shouldn't.'

'Um… Well, I've been trying not to bring this up but I out rank you. And…' She struggled for a way to put her real concerns politely. 'Mags, you're about as sensitive as a shovel.'

Grace was suddenly burnt by a sharply arched eyebrow and a withering stare. 'You know absolutely nothing about me, do you? I'm not completely incapable. Now, point the man out.'

Grace was shocked at the virulence of Maggie's response. She had seen Maggie angry before but it had always been a general annoyance; angry at the war, angry at their lack of supplies, angry at her own helplessness. It seemed at this moment that the direct and pure focus of Maggie's anger was Grace herself and it felt like she'd been physically knocked over.

Mutely, she led Maggie back out on to the ward and pointed to Malcolm who was shifting weight nervously from foot to foot, politely trying to avoid staring at one patient for too long. She watched as Maggie walked over and gently laid a hand on is arm before leading him into the office, which tangentially she hadn't asked Grace if she could use.

They were in the office for maybe twenty minutes. Actually, there was no maybe about it, Grace timed it; it was twenty minutes. She wondered what Maggie would say, what words would come to her that had so completely eluded Grace. Maybe she should get her to write the letter home too. Again, she caught herself thinking about Maggie bitterly and she now realised why. Before they had always been a three, ever since Peebles it had been Grace and Maggie and Dorothea together. When she was away from Maggie, Grace could almost stop thinking about Dorothea's absence, it was like nothing had changed, but when they were together it was made obvious by the hole that yawned between them.

Malcolm Fletcher came out of the office, followed by Maggie, looking ashen face. No matter how sensitively she had put it, whatever she said had snubbed the life out of that lively young man. Grace only had time to offer him her garbled sympathies before he left to re-join his unit, there wasn't really much else to be done.

Since the beginning of their training, Grace and Maggie had spent the entire war with camp beds placed side by side. That night, Grace asked Maggie how she had broken the news to Malcolm, thinking that perhaps the conversation might be easier to have in the dark and in hushed whispers so the other girls didn't hear.

'Don't worry, I gave him some bollocks about how she wouldn't have felt anything. I didn't tell him she was crushed to death.'

That was Sunday the 9th of January. The next morning was the start of a week which could be described with some accuracy as one of the worst of the whole war, at least for Grace. Maggie had already risen by the time she had woken up and Grace didn't see her for much of the morning. This could have been because Grace spent a lot of time in the office dealing with paperwork and telegrams, trying to work out exactly where everyone was after the mess up at Bastogne, the new Matron couldn't come soon enough. However, whispers she heard from the other nurses suggested that Maggie hadn't been pulling her weight on the wards and was purposefully making herself scarce.

Grace knew she should pull her up on it, knew the other girls expected her to but their friendship was so tentative at the moment she didn't know if it would survive her playing the rank card. No, it was far better to just hang in there, cover up when she made mistakes and wait for the new Matron to come along and whip her into shape, then Grace could happily play the role of supportive friend when Maggie felt she was being unfairly victimised.

The next day Grace decided to go and check up on her, subtly of course, just to check everything was running smoothly. She was on the post-operative ward which was one of the most difficult as it required you to pay a lot of attention to who got what treatment as well as keeping an eye out for any signs of infection.

However, Maggie was pushed out of her mind when she saw some familiar names on the patient list. _Toye and Guarnere. _Joe Toye she didn't know well only that he was one of Guarnere's friends, but Bill she had spent a bit of time with and she liked him.

Grace saw Maggie coming towards her looking just about as awful as she had ever seen her.

'Toye and Guarnere?' she asked.

Maggie shook her head. 'They've lost a leg each. They're just coming out of surgery now.'

Grace's hands flew to her mouth. 'Oh no!'

'I know it's horrible, but shouldn't we be used to it by now?'

She was about to call Maggie out on her callousness; this wasn't just anyone, this was _Bill_, a man she considered her friend, but look at Maggie she could tell that this was one of those occasions where she was saying exactly the opposite of what she was feeling. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glistened with unshed tears.

'Where are you going?'

'For a fag.' Maggie was already walking away.

'But you're on shift!'

'Cover for me if you care so much!'

With a furious sigh Grace tucked into the post-operative ward.

'Where's Maggie?' demanded Irene, the nurse Grace had teamed Maggie up with for her shift, precisely because she was the type of girl who didn't ask questions. Clearly she had had enough of holding her tongue.

'I sent her on an errand. I'll help you out.'

She was distracted from Irene's further questions by the arrival of the Surgeon, Major Channing directing some orderlies in the arrangement of his latest post-operative case – Sergeant Bill Guarnere. Grace rushed forward and silently, with movements practiced hundreds of times, helped them to arrange his still unconscious figure on the bed. There were a lot of painful red welts on his upper thighs where he had been caught by burning tree bursts. These wounds were relatively superficial but needed to stay open so she fitted a frame that would lift the bed sheet from his body but would still keep him covered. Needless to say, the stump of his leg, amputated at the knee was neatly bandaged.

'Administer the penicillin in the usual doses,' instructed Major Channing, scribbling some notes into a chart which Grace would have to later to decipher. 'But I don't anticipate any further complications.'

'No problems during the operation?'

'Oh no, the man's as strong as an ox. Perfectly healthy, just a little lopsided now.'

If Bill was awake to hear that he probably would have laughed. The surgeon exited the tent to prepare for another operation; she knew his job was pretty much relentless.

In his sleeping state Grace saw Bill in a way she had never seen him before but had seen hundreds of strangers. Skin not just white with blood loss but grey with strain and shock. Across the ward lay Joe Toye a man she didn't know well but recognised from Aldbourne. He too had lost a leg that night. Grace was suddenly hit by a pang of home sickness, a longing for that time in Aldbourne when none of them had known what war was and looked to it eagerly.

'Hey, Marlene, don't get upset over this.' His eyes were open watching her, a little glazed from the medication but generally aware and his voice sounded strong.

'But I am upset! And so is Maggie. Your _leg_, Bill.'

When he took her hand it was shaking but his smile was still bright and genuine. 'This is the best thing that could have happened to me, sweetheart. Well, not the best thing but as Hitler don't seem to be turning around and admitting this has all been a big mistake, any time soon, it's pretty good. I get to go home. I get to see America again, and my girl and my mom. You know my brother died in Italy? Well, this means my mom gets at least one son home, if not in one piece then pretty close.' He smiled wider looking down at the space where the missing limb was without flinching. 'Besides, it's only a leg. I got a spare.'

Grace was taken aback by his bravery. It was one thing for Matron to lose a leg, shocking and sad but she was a middle-aged woman who had lived a life and had her prime but Bill was twenty-one years old. She had been present when boys like him had woken up from operations to find life altering injuries and they saw only the end of everything; the fact that they would never play sports, that they might never work, that their girlfriends might not take them back. Bill saw a future back home that wasn't tied to the leg he had lost.

'You're a very brave man, Bill,' she said, patting his hand as she stood.

He shrugged. 'Ehh, I'm okay.'

'Get some sleep. We'll ship you out in the morning.'

Checking the rest of the patients, getting them ready for bed, which with some of them was a two man job she had to share with Irene, was a welcome distraction from what she should really be thinking about. Maggie.

Ever since Bastogne Maggie had been a liability on the ward. She was lazy, distracted, never where you need her to be and now she had just walked off from her shift. True she had never been the most committed or dedicated of nurses but before her attitude had been a bit of a joke, now it was becoming a danger.

Frankly, Grace was furious with her. Why should she have to pick up all the slack? Why should she have to be the one to hold everything together? But she knew that yelling at Maggie like she so wanted to was not the way to make her case. She had to make it clear that this wasn't a friendship issue but a professional one. In this instance they were not friends, Maggie was her subordinate.

She had to wait until the end of the shift when she could pass the ward onto another nurse before she could had back to their tent and find Maggie fully intending to tell her exactly what was on her mind.

Maggie wasn't smoking or sleeping or reading an old copy of _Photoplay_. Grace wasn't sure what she was doing but it looked a little like she was _praying_.

'Is that a rosary? Are you Catholic?'

Maggie hastily tucked it away. 'Oh God, no. My family are almost militantly C of E.'

'Maggie, I…'

'Come to give me a bollocking have you, Ward Sister Barnes?' The sarcasm in her voice had a painful bite.

'Maggie, you can't behave like this. If Matron were here you know you'd be up in front of a court martial.'

'And unfortunately for me, though she's not here, you are channelling her spirit.'

Grace frowned. 'She's not dead.'

'I know! I was just making a point. It doesn't matter.' Maggie stood and strolled over to the mirror, checking her red-eyes and poor complexion. 'I know you'll think it superficial; stupid, vain Maggie, but I find not being able to have a bath completely and utterly demoralising. I don't feel like myself. I look in the mirror and I don't even recognise myself.'

'We all feel that way, Mags.'

'No. You're thriving off this war. I see it in you. Every day you're finding new strengths you never knew you had. All I'm finding are weaknesses.' Grace didn't really know what to say to that so it was lucky that Maggie continued while not taking her eyes off her own face in the mirror. 'You know, my mother said that nursing might be the making of me. It would mean I'd have to think about someone other than myself for once. All it's shown me is that caring about others is overrated.'

Grace wanted to smash the damn mirror. What good did her stupid self-pity do for men like Joe Toye and Bill Guarnere? All those men like them whose lives had been physically changed but still managed to smile, it made Maggie's battle fatigue or whatever it was she was she'd got seem pathetic.

'You still have a job to do, Maggie,' she snapped. 'And you better buck up your ideas if you want to keep it.'

_Buck up your ideas_. It was only after Grace had stormed out of the tent that she realised that for that moment Matron had been in the room.

On Tuesday, Dick Winters paid a visit. She was in the administrative office just completing the evacuation orders for Joe Toye and Bill Guarnere. They would be in England by Friday and on their way back to America by the beginning of next week. She wished them the best of luck.

'Knock knock.' With no doors on the tents what had started off as a bit of a game in Normandy was now standard practice amongst the nurses and Grace called her visitor in. It was Irene.

'What is it?'

'You've got a visitor. A Captain Someone or other.'

Grace arched an eyebrow at her. 'Is that his full name?'

'I can't remember. You may be the boss now but I'm not your secretary.'

'Sorry. Can you show him in? I'll be nice when I get round to drawing up the rotas.'

This seemed to brighten her up and she headed out to escort her visitor in. It was probably Nixon, Grace thought and her stomach flipped in anticipation. She tried not to look disappointed when Irene showed in Dick.

'Dick! What are you doing up here?'

'Just visiting. How are you?'

'Fine. Irene can you be an absolute love and find Captain Winters a cup of coffee.'

If the promise of an easy set of shifts had already have been made, Irene might have refused but she went without a word.

Dick glanced after the nurse. 'You letting power go to your head?'

'Oh, definitely,' Grace assured him.

They didn't talk about anything that mattered for five minutes, until Irene returned with a steaming tin mug. She asked about his girl back home and he told her that he'd sent her some parachute silk back for a late Christmas present. Not too much, she warned, or she'd get the wrong idea and start making it into a wedding dress. It was clear that Dick had something important to say but she let him take his time to bring it up. She wondered if it was about Nixon, if word had got out through Speirs or Nixon himself. She might just be in for a serious, brotherly talk about the perils of getting involved with a feckless married man.

Finally he spoke. 'I've noticed the way you look after all of us, Easy Company.'

'You're not in Easy Company anymore,' she pointed out, trying to keep the conversation light.

He grimaced. Sore spot. 'I know. But I've noticed and I really appreciate it. It means a lot to the men.'

'Well, why don't you talk to Colonel Sink about getting me a medal? Come on, Dick, what's up?'

'We've had a rough time of it, lately. We lost a lot of men. Toccoa men.'

'Yeah, I know. I've had some of fallout up here.'

'Some of the men are taking it badly. I can see some of them going the way Buck Compton did and I've got to do something about it. I'm trying to convince Malarkey to act as my runner for a couple of days. I did have Joe Liebgott but regiment have plucked him away, they want to use him as a translator for interrogating the POWs.'

'That's… good.' Why did he have to talk in such a rambling fashion? She wished he would just get to the point, she had things to be getting on with.

'It would be for anyone else,' he continued. 'But Liebgott's Jewish. And angry as hell these past couple of months. I don't think it's the right job for him.'

'So, talk to regiment. Offer them your opinion.'

'My opinion with regiment isn't worth a handful of beans. I'm Battalion CO only in everything but name but the name is all that matters.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Just keep an eye on him while he's up here. Look after him, you know, like you've been doing for everyone else.'

Grace nodded. 'Sure, sure. Of course. You don't have to worry about it.'

Dick looked as though at least some of the weight which was crippling his shoulders had been lifted. He smiled.

'Was that all you wanted to talk to me about?' said Grace. 'Joe? Nothing else?'

He frowned like he'd been hit with a trick question and Grace knew she could rely on both Nixon and Speirs' continuing discretion. 'No. Should there be something else?'

'No. Nothing at all.'

She wondered how he would react when he found out. He was Nixon's best friends and he knew that he wasn't exactly faithful to his wife. He never passed judgement on his friend but she couldn't imagine a man as honest and conservative as Dick Winters would approve. The disapproval would be there but he would keep it secret.

She didn't forget Dick's request but when she was Joe Liebgott around the hospital over the next few days he seemed fine. He said hello, they had a few short conversations but he was busy doing work for intelligence and she was driven to distraction with all the things she was now responsible for with the nurses. So she was hit with a sudden rush of guilt when one of the doctors came rushing into her office saying it was all kicking off on the POW ward.

Just as they had in Normandy, they kept the smaller POW ward away from the rest of the camp, though it was no secret that it was there and security was a little tighter. There were also fewer serious injuries as it was mostly full of Germans who had wandered into enemy lines by mistake on the nights when the fog lay low over the foxholes. The few casualties were a result of the minor skirmishes to the north where other regiments had managed to take some new ground. As such it was a cushy job and Grace had been making sure that Maggie had been getting more than her fair share of POW time on the rota as a way of keeping her out of trouble.

Grace followed the doctor to the ward. She should have noted the panic on his face because then she wouldn't have been surprised when she saw Joe Liebgott being dragged off a bleeding POW by a burly orderly or Maggie trying to hold back the POW's arms as the whole ward erupted into chaos.

'You wanna say that to my face?! Huh? You fuckin' sonofabitch! You goddamn coward kraut!'

The POW's responses were in German but conveyed a similar feeling.

'What the _hell_ is going on here?!'

It was the loudest Grace had ever yelled and everyone, even those patients who weren't directly involved turned to stare at her. She suddenly felt a little embarrassed but pushed that away to replace with stern.

'This is no way to behave.' She turned to the orderly who held Joe around the chest, pinning his arms to his sides. 'Let him go.'

Joe pushed him away, glaring daggers. Maggie helped her patient back into the bed just as an MP burst into the ward.

'What happened?' he asked, taking in the scene of chaos.

'This man attacked one of patients,' said the doctor.

'He was mouthing off,' was Joe's defence. 'You can't understand him, you didn't hear what he said.'

'Shut up, Joe,' hissed Grace. She spoke to the MP, a young man who looked as if he had spent a very easy war guarding supply trucks. 'Nothing happened. It was just a little disagreement.'

The MP glanced between the two of them nervily, not really sure of what to make of the situation. 'Do you want us to take him off your hands, ma'am?'

'No!' she said quickly. 'We're fine. He's fine now. Aren't you, Joe?'

He nodded sullenly. 'Just peachy.'

The same MP, obviously new to the job wasn't quite buying it. 'We really should take him. We need to file a report for his CO.'

'Why do you need a report? Nothing happened. No one's hurt.' The POW's newly opened stitches said differently. 'Seriously. I don't have a complaint to make and you don't want to waste your time with all that paperwork.'

'Well…'

'He just needs a moment to cool off. And he's sorry, it won't happen again.'

'Yeah, real sorry.' There wasn't one ounce of regret in Joe's voice and Grace tried to convey in a look how very inappropriate sarcasm was in this situation.

'Okay, I guess, if you say it's alright.'

'I do.'

With the MPs satisfied and the doctor fobbed off with the assurance that she would deal with things, Grace turned to Joe with fire in her eyes. 'Outside, now.'

She all but pushed him out of the tent.

'Am I in trouble now?' he said laughing bitterly but the anger was spitting off him. It scared her, seeing him like this, looking inside him and seeing a wild animal pacing and rattling the bars of his cage in impotent rage.

'What the hell was that?'

'I don't know what everyone's goddamn problem is all of a sudden; they're Germans. You know Speirs had the right idea on D-Day, just mowing 'em down.'

'You know it's not that simple.' Grace tried to keep her voice low, she didn't want to add any fuel to the fire though it was obvious he was looking for the antagonism.

'Can't we make it simple? Us good, Germans bad,' he said. 'Are you gonna report me to Lieutenant Dike or Captain Winters?'

That was the question. 'I don't know who Lieutenant Dike is, and Winters… He's just worried about you.'

''Cause he thinks I'm cracking up.'

'No! Maybe a little. You're different, Joe. Remember that time we went dancing in Reims? Or played cards in a barn back in Aldbourne? You're a completely different person now.'

'What'd you mean "different"? That I ain't the same sunny-side up, easy going, everybody's buddy, Joe? In case you hadn't noticed, sweetheart my buddies keep getting blown to hell on a regular basis. I sleep in a _hole_, a fuckin' hole in the woods living with the knowledge that there's some sonofabitch across the field that wants to kill me. Sorry if I ain't been in the mood to crack many jokes lately.'

Grace opened her mouth without really knowing what was going to come out of it but he wasn't finished. 'And you know what, what the hell business is it of yours? You ain't nobody's mother or wife or sister or whatever it is you think you are. You got problems of your own, sweetheart why don't you focus on those and quit jumping on everyone else's?'

Two days later Joe asked for a transfer back to the line and got it from Winters no problem. Before he left he apologised to Grace and it was completely heartfelt and full of regret accompanied by chocolate he had stolen from a regimental supply truck. And while she said that she forgave him and she had, truly, his words still stuck and she wondered if there was any truth in them.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

_So I'm finally on my way back home. After two months of being shunted back and forth across England from hospital to replacement depot, I'm finally going to get back in the game. I guess the time away has given me a lot of perspective. When you last saw me I was on the rocks, I didn't know if I wanted to be a soldier anymore, if any kind of victory would be worth all the pain and suffering the guys on the line have to face. Don't worry, I haven't had some life changing epiphany, the secrets of war haven't suddenly been opened up to me, I still don't know why people fight. What I do know is why those guys on the line hang on and keep going; it's that sense of solidarity that I've sorely missed these weeks I've been away. I have brothers in real life (that's how I think about it, as real life, since Toccoa this has all been a dream), I have friends from college and friends I've known since before I could walk, but what you have in war is different than any of those friendships. You're completely interdependent on each other and while that's kind of terrifying at the time, once it's taken away it's really hard to get used to living without again. I guess you must know what I'm talking about. You've got those nurses you've been with since training._

_My mother's been sending me clippings from the newspapers back home about how the war's going. It's a nice thought but really they're the last thing I want to see. I don't need some armchair analyst to tell me how triumphant the 101__st__ were at Bastogne. I can read between the lines just fine and I know they caught some hell out there. I know you probably think I'm crazy for wanting to go back again but, like I said, without the solidarity you just don't feel right._

_Hopefully we'll catch up somewhere in Europe. I could give you the details as to where I'm going but they'll only censor the hell out of me. I've already been called up for writing letters which might "damage the morale and confidence of the American people". Like I give a damn about how the people back home are feeling, I'm not going to write lies just so they can feel better about themselves. Anyway, knowing you and your ability to pop up when needed I guess I'll be seeing you sooner or later._

_Yours,_

_David K. Webster_

Grace the read the letter in the bath, soaking deep in water that had cooled to lukewarm. Lazily, she stretched allowing the letter to drop from her fingers and flutter to the floor beside the copper tub she basked in.

They were off the line now, far back, returned to the 6th Hospital in Brussels and more important than David Webster's imminent arrival was the arrival of the new Matron who, Grace had been assured would be with them before the week was out. She couldn't be more thrilled. It was a point of pride that she was a damn good combat nurse, she had improved so much since her time working in civilian hospitals back home. But she still wasn't old enough to take on the kind of responsibility she'd been struggling with since Christmas day. Three weeks of pretending to be Matron had been enough to wear her to the point of tears and beyond. She was looking forward to just being an ordinary Ward Sister once more.

In Brussels they had been swallowed into the warmth of a proper indoor hospital with real beds and equipment, billeted in real houses and eating food served at tables with cutlery. Things were feeling a lot less war torn. The copper bath that Grace was currently luxuriating in had taken an hour and half to fill and heat but it was accompanied by soap and was deep enough that she could immerse her whole body and wash her hair. It felt like heaven to be able to wash away the memory of the Ardennes.

Best of all, better than beds and baths and food, was leave. A weekend pass, in fact to shop and see the sights of Brussels. Grace and Maggie were spending the afternoon in the city. It had been Grace's idea, she knew that there would be nothing Maggie liked better than to spend her carefully collected pile of Liberation money on whatever it was liberated Belgium had to offer.

With a heavy sigh of reluctance, Grace heaved herself out of the bath, looked around and realised that in all the bother of actually drawing the bath she'd forgotten a towel.

'Maggie!' she yelled, hoping her friend was still where she'd left her, draped across the bed in the next door room, cutting out pictures from _Photoplay_ to decorate their new room. Brussels certainly agreed with her and she was almost back to her old self which was a relief. Grace desperately needed her friend back.

The bathroom door opened and towel was tossed unceremoniously across the room.

'Thank you!'

They set their hair for the first time in ages. In France Matron keeping up a pretence of femininity had been a point of pride, in Belgium it had been impossible, now it was nice to put on make-up and tights, actually tights under their Class A uniforms.

Outside the heat of the city had melted the snow which had caused such problems in Bastogne to a messy sludge and they skidded about in the lace ups.

Maggie seemed to have a nose for the best shops, even if those shops were tucked away in an obscure corner of a city she had never been to before. After a few false starts they hit the jackpot with a beautiful clothes shop run by a wrinkled old Belgium woman which was bursting with anything a girl could ask for.

A quick glance around the shop told them that a lot of the stock probably wasn't entirely legal and may have had something to do with a sympathetic German officer. There were silks and lace and bright costume jewellery. To two girls who had been practically living in khaki uniforms for six months it was like Aladdin's cave.

'Oh my God!' Grace's eye was instantly swept up by a beautiful red tea dress. Red had always been her favourite colour and this really was a lovely shade, bright and eye-catching with a high neck, cinched in waist and full skirt. It used so much fabric as to be almost decadent. 'Maggie, I think I'm in love.'

'Red,' said Maggie feeling the fabric. 'Good colour. For a scarlet woman.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Your married man, that still going on is it?'

'Maybe,' she answered coyly.

'Maybe always means yes.'

'Except when it means none of your business.'

'Alright, alright. I won't ask but you can't stop me speculating.' She strolled towards the back of the shop where items of clothing were kept out of the window display. Lingerie and pretty undergarments. Maggie held up a particularly frilly pair of knickers for Grace's inspection. 'What do you think? Regulation?'

'Definitely not. And whose benefit would you be buying those for? Doctor Philips? A Lieutenant Colonel? Or George Luz?'

Maggie dropped the underwear. 'Don't be ridiculous. A girl doesn't have to buy knickers for a man, she buys them for herself. Anyway, I chose them for you.'

'Me?' Grace had never really owned nice underwear like that before. There had been no purpose for it and even if she wanted it there had first been her mother who would disapprove and then the Army who took almost inappropriate interest in what the girls were wearing under their uniforms.

'Yes. The married man, does he like frills?'

'How on earth would I know?' She could feel a blush rising in her face and really hoped that the old woman at the till wasn't sufficiently fluent in English to keep up with the conversation. 'I can't afford it anyway. Not if I want the dress. And this scarf…'

Swept by a sudden wave of indulgence she grabbed a floaty scarf made out of some kind of chiffony material. Maggie didn't press the issue of the underwear and chose a mandarin collared blouse. The girls paid for their purchases. However, the wink the old woman dropped Grace as she handed over their Belgian Francs told her that she had understood the conversation perfectly.

It was getting dark when they left the shop and stepped into the night air. Their next task was to find a pub and the easiest way to do that was follow the uniforms.

It didn't take long to find a cellar overflowing with music and British soldiers. Grace and Maggie used their elbows to push their way into a warm and stuffy room where there was a bar set up selling the strong brown beer preferred by the Germans.

In one corner was a particularly rowdy bunch of paratroopers, easily recognisable by their maroon berets decorated with silver parachute wing badges. A loud cheer rippled through them as they all raised their glasses. 'To the 13th!'

'13th?' repeated Maggie. 'That's a coincidence. We've a friend who's in the 13th Paras.'

'I'll be your friend!' shouted one of the mob cheekily.

They both ignored him and the laughs and gentle ribbing that followed. 'Lieutenant Fletcher, do any of you know him?'

There was some genuine discussion amongst the group as they tried to discern who might know the correct Lieutenant Fletcher until someone called to one of the back tables. 'Here, Scotty, weren't Lieutenant Fletcher one of your lot? C Company?'

Scotty turned towards them, a good looking young man with his beret perched at a dangerous angle and cigar wedged beneath an impressive moustache. 'Yeah, what of it?'

'What happened to him?'

'Bought it two days before we were pulled off the line.'

Sergeant David Scott, "Scotty" to his mates, graciously agreed to step outside with them and provide a little detail about what happened. He accepted the cigarette offered to him more to be polite and so that he could have something to do with his hands, he already stank of the dank tobacco found in the cheap Belgian cigars.

'We had a bad time of it taking Bure. I know all the newspapers are talking about the Yanks holding the Ardennes but we've been here too, and the Ox and Bucks. What a bloody show. It were a three day assault, just us 'gainst Tigers and mortar crews. We lost a third of the Battalion killed or wounded, a _third_. But we managed it, and Fletch made it through not a scratch on him.' He spoke slowly in a thick Lancashire accent which suggested that in civilian life maybe he was a bit of a farm boy. 'Anyway, after all that hell he got done while out on a routine reccy. Shouldn't have been any problem but the squad stumbled onto a stray scouting party. God, he should have known better.'

'What do you mean?' asked Grace.

'I weren't with him but I heard from some of the blokes who was. They all said it were like he walked into it, like he were crossing the road without looking. It were dark, if he'd of stayed with the rest of the lads they wouldn't have spotted him but… Yeah, he just walked into it. Got it straight through the eyes.'

Grace and Maggie offered to thank Scotty by buying him a drink but he turned out to be a gentleman and bought them one instead. It was a crowded environment, lots of drink, lots of music and lots of men keen to approach two English girls on their own but neither of them where in any mood for fun. They finished their drinks out of politeness to Scotty and left as soon as they could.

Walking back Grace finally asked Maggie, 'Do you think Malcolm did it on purpose?'

'What? Walked into a bullet because he couldn't stand the thought of life without Dorothea?' Maggie shook her head. 'Of course not. Sometimes these things just happen.'

As romantic as Grace's theory was, Maggie was probably right. It was ridiculous and dangerous to love so much. No one could be that dependent on one person.

Two days later, Grace's liberation arrived in the form of Katherine Childerley-Smith, the new Matron. She was younger than her predecessor, perhaps early forties if you'd be pushed to guess, but she was the kind of women who looked so serious she had probably been born middle aged. She was a thin woman made of lines and sharp corners, even in a state of ease she was standing to attention, her arms neatly tucked behind her back, feet just less than shoulder width apart. They had received their orders that their break in Brussels was over and they were moving across the Rhine. The hospital was in a state of disarray as they packed up all the supplies they might need for the next stage of their journey. It was a state of organised chaos which the new Matron looked at odds with.

Grace was summoned from overseeing the packing up of the trucks by an orderly to greet her new CO. She approached her with a smile and an outstretched hand which was shook gingerly. 'Hello, I'm Grace Barnes, the Senior Sister here. I can't tell you how glad we are to have you, me particularly.'

'Thank you, Captain. Major Childerley-Smith.' Grace frowned. Matron could never stand for military rankings, everyone was just a nurse. She shrugged it off as one of the woman's idiosyncrasies.

'Oh right, _Major_. Well, you find us in a bit of a state at the moment. Everyone's excited to be getting that bit closer to Germany. I suppose you'll be wanting to meet the girls first.'

Another little sniff of disapproval and Grace realised she had been wrong in her use of the word "girls".

'Actually I think I'd rather read the daily reports for the past month or so, so as not to find myself at a disadvantage.'

Grace's smile faltered. She hadn't exactly been diligent in her upkeep of the paperwork situation during her brief reign and she had no idea if Matron had ever filed anything about their time in Bastogne, if she had it was likely buried beneath the rubble of the church. She doubted an air raid would be a satisfactory explanation for the new "Major". 'Um…' she stuttered. 'Well, we may have packed all the already but I'll ask Major Phillips and see if we can't dig something up.'

'And Barnes, was it?'

'Yes.'

'I don't know if that is standard uniform.' She nodded to the patterned scarf Grace had bought in town, which she had tied around her head, partly as a practicality to keep her hair off her face, mostly just to add a splash of colour to her drab uniform.

So, that's how it was going to go, thought Grace reluctantly pulling off the scarf. She may not have seen eye to eye with Matron, in fact they had been at loggerheads for most of their time together but a least she had her priorities straight. Disappointingly, it looked very much as if Major Childerley-Smith was going to spend her time chained to the typewriter, though there was still time for first impressions to be proved wrong.

Too soon to make judgements was exactly what she should have told the other nurses who were anxiously waiting on her verdict. What Grace actually came out with was more like, 'Uh, she's going to be a complete nightmare!'

Mary groaned. 'Typical. Are all Matron's just clones of each other?'

'Oh, she's nothing like Matron, the old Matron,' Grace said. 'She's…' She turned to Maggie. 'She's not going to like you.'

'Really?' Maggie didn't seem overly concerned, though she was never really concerned if anyone liked her.

'I think she likes rules. She's going to be really by the book.'

Maggie laughed. 'Doesn't she know we threw the rule book out somewhere across the Channel?'

'Where has she served?' asked Irene. 'Italy or Africa or where?'

'I don't know. She didn't look very tanned.'

A second groan from Mary. 'Even more typical, they've sent us a civilian nurse. I bet she does very well back in Sussex or wherever on her nice clean ward, but here she won't last a week.'

'Well, we all made it,' said Grace. They may feel like they had seen it all at this point but she still remembered those first terrifying weeks in Normandy where she would have cried herself to sleep every night if she hadn't been so exhausted. 'Let's just see how she goes.'

The last thing they packed up before moving out bright and early the next day were their personal belongings. Grace made sure she had the scarf to hand in case she ever needed a symbol of rebellion and also folded her new red dress. She didn't know if she ever have an opportunity to wear it before the war was out but it's presence was a reminder that she was a woman and she did have nice legs which were shown off to best advantage beneath a short skirt.

Maggie watched her pack from her side of the bedroom. 'You'll have to dig out an iron if you ever hope to wear that.'

'I'm sure that won't be a problem. Haven't you heard? We're heading towards civilisation.'

_**I promise Easy Company will return in the next chapter. Hopefully out tomorrow or Thursday.**_

_**And just so you don't think I don't do my research, the 13**__**th**__** Parachute Battalion from South Lancashire were one of the few British troops in the Ardennes and suffered heavy casualties in what was often hand to hand combat. If anyone ever wanted to make a British version of Band of Brothers they would be good candidates because they were tough bastards.**_

_**Thank you very much SparkELee for your lovely clump of reviews! Did you read it all in one go? I'm glad you like Grace and Nixon together.**_

_**Reviews much appreciated as always.**_


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Passing through Verdun on their journey back through France caused Grace to pause for thought because she knew her father fought there in the first war, before he was her father. He was quickly invalided out when a flying piece of shrapnel got lodged in his back, Grace remembered seeing the scars on family trips to the seaside. It was while he was recuperating back in England that he met her mother and they fell in love and got married, working through their own wartime love story. It was remarkable how little things changed, children walking through the footsteps of their parents.

They were entering into a part of Alsace Lorraine which had been see-sawing between French and German possession since 1914. German presence had been well established since 1940 and with so few French locals about it almost felt like Germany, even the signs were written in both French and German. It was also horribly, miserably grey.

They were part of a long convey of army vehicles moving no faster than a snail's pace along a route which should have taken them no more than six hours but which at the speed they were going would leave them arriving at their destination well into the night. It was oppressively boring. The nurses had tried singing, regaling the rest of the convoy from their open top truck with raucous renditions of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", but were stopped halfway through the first verse of "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" by an irate Major Smith (how could they be so vulgar?). Since then it had been silence punctuated by a few lacklustre attempts at I-Spy.

Major Smith had fallen asleep, which provoked a little amusement as she did so with her mouth wide open. Everyone had decided that they probably hated her, her biggest crime in the last twenty-four hours being that she had insisted that they leave Trigger the dog behind in Belgium. Grace begged, Maggie begged, all the girls begged as he had become quite the little mascot after surviving the Battle of the Bulge but the Major was having none of it. Luckily, Major Phillips was kind enough to directed them to the nearest Red Cross club where a very nice clerk told Grace he would be happy to care for Trigger as if he were his own. The damage had been done, however and Major Smith was probably only second to Hitler himself as on the unit's most hated list that morning.

A loud whistle shook Grace out of her doze that and a cry of, "Grace! Hey, Grace!"

She turned and saw coasting along beside them in a US army jeep was David Webster, grinning and waving.

'Look who it isn't,' said Maggie before calling to him. 'Are you coming aboard then, or what?'

The trucks were moving only at a walking pace so Webster easily bridged the gap between them and hopped aboard, throwing himself beside Maggie with a heavy exhale of breath. He looked good for his sojourn in the hospital. His uniform was crisp and cleaner than was usual this side of Paris, beneath his helmet his hair was clean too and, most noticeably his hands, there was virtual no grime caught beneath the nails. His blue eyes shone brightly as he smiled around the back of the truck.

'Morning, ladies,' he grinned stupidly and Grace returned the smile, unable to help herself.

'Good Lord, David,' she said. 'It's been so long I barely recognise you.'

'You barely recognise me because I'm not covered head to toe in mud. They treat us well at the Replacement depot.'

'They certainly do,' commented Maggie, eying him up and down appreciatively.

'Where are you headed?' asked Grace.

'Some end of the world town on the banks of the Meuse. I've been zigzagging this way and that all across the goddamn country trying to find the 101st.'

'Sounds like the direction we're heading to,' said Maggie. 'What's the town called again, Grace?'

In her previous role as temporary matron Grace had been privileged to certain sensitive information like where exactly they would be positioned next. She was supposed to keep it secret in case enemy spies found out (though what they could do with the information she couldn't possibly say), now that she was no longer in a position of authority she saw no reason to keep it to herself. 'Haguenau. Or just outside at least. A town called Hochfelden. Even the names are starting to sound German.'

'And with the 101st on our doorstep again.' Maggie gave her a playful nudge with her foot. 'You'll be able to look up your mysterious secret boyfriend.'

'Boyfriend?' Webster asked with raised eyebrows. 'Anyone I know?'

Grace blushed. He was looking at her, not accusingly but in a way that was guarded and hard to read. She realised that while she had very firmly decided that they were never going to be anything but very good friends, she might not have let him know. His letters had been completely unromantic but maybe he wasn't very good at conveying emotion in writing (she knew that wasn't true). Still, he couldn't possibly think that a movie and a kiss six months ago tied her to him.

'She's just joking. There's no one.' She quickly changed the subject. 'So how was the hospital? Did you get lots of material for your book?'

A shadow passed across his face. 'I don't think any of it'll make the cut. It was boring.' Now it was his turn to change the subject. 'Hey, where's your friend? The cute girl from the POW ward.'

Maggie and Grace eyed each other up, daring each other to be the one to say it. Maggie's eyes flashed as if to say "I did it last time", so Grace bit the bullet. 'There was an air raid in Bastogne. Dorothea didn't make it.'

'Oh.'

The truck suddenly passed over a particularly sharp bump in the road. Webster was thrown against Maggie and Major Smith was thrown against the side of the cab, waking from her doze with a start. She seemed embarrassed to be caught in such an unprofessional state and as she glanced around the truck to see if anyone had noticed. Her eyes landed on Webster.

'You!' she gasped. 'Who are you and what are you doing here?'

Webster raised his hands defensively and tried a winning smile which wasn't quite going to cut the mustard. 'No harm, I was just hitching a ride.'

'This is transport for medical personnel only! Remove yourself at once and return to your proper position. I should report you. Who is your commanding officer? What unit are you with?'

He smiled, jumped down lithely from the truck bed, yelling after him with obvious glee, 'I'm with the 101st Airborne!'

With a wave to Grace and Maggie he ran on down the line after his jeep.

Major Smith turned her beady eyes on the girls who were stifling giggles. 'Do either of you know that young man?'

They assured her in no uncertain terms that they had never seen him before in their lives and they certainly hadn't invited him to join them.

Hochfelden was a small suburb of Haguenau. Before the war it had been a predominately Jewish area. When the Germans invaded more than half the population had been interned God knows where and ever since the town had been caught in a miserable state of half desertion. Despite the optimism felt from at least seeing German names on signposts there was no doubt that this town, at least was still very much at war.

They were placed in a hospital, an actual civilian hospital though there were no civilians to speak of but there was enough that was familiar about it to remind Grace of her first days of nursing back in England, big windowed wards (though with most of panes boarded over), properly lit operating theatres and well supplied store rooms. There was enough here for sheets on the beds and regular changed bandages and morphine and plasma was in abundance. It was a far cry from Bastogne.

And they weren't alone. An American Red Cross unit was already set up there something which came abruptly apparent when no sooner had they crawled out of the flatbed truck and stretched the cramp out of their legs that a shrill little American voice called out to them.

'Hiya, girls! I was hoping it'd be you!'

It was Ally, the American exchange student that had had tagging along with them in Holland, running towards them looking just as wild and childlike as she had ever done.

As she approached, Maggie turned herself sideways towards Grace and said through gritted teeth, 'I thought we had got shot of her.'

'I like her!' Grace insisted but it wasn't very convincing.

They both turned towards Ally with broad smiles and accepted her greeting.

Ally was happy to show them round the maze of the hospital but taking special care to point out the most exciting addition to the base camp – the Red Cross Club.

'It ain't much,' she said. 'But you can buy chocolate there and they've got records and this cute little record player. We're having a dance there this weekend.'

'That's convenient,' said Maggie. 'Because Saturday also happens to be our Grace's birthday.' Grace had almost forgotten herself so she was pleased that Maggie remembered.

'Oh that is just perfect!' squealed Ally. 'It can be a little party! Invite whoever you want though we need more gals, to even things out.'

' Yeah, I don't think Grace and I are going to do much to balance the numbers,' sniffed Maggie but Grace knew she was interested in an opportunity to get dressed up.

'Yeah, I noticed it was just the two of you,' said Ally. 'What happened to Dorothea? She and that hunky paratrooper she kept going on about finally tie the knot?'

'She died,' said Grace quickly. This was getting tiring if only there was a way of releasing some kind of newspaper announcement then she and Maggie wouldn't have to keep going through this. They could skip the awkwardness and the clumsy sympathies.

'So did he,' added Maggie.

'Oh gosh!' Ally exclaimed. 'My foot should just live in my mouth. But isn't it romantic that the two of them just couldn't live without each other?' Grace wouldn't have called it that. 'You know she was inspiration.'

'How so?' asked Maggie, the mocking tone layered deep in her voice.

'The way she loved that man, it was so beautiful. I thought that at the time and now I know how it feels since I found my Charlie. Jeez, I just love that guy to death.' Maggie rolled her eyes. This Ally saw. 'Which is probably an unfortunate choice of words but it's true. We met at a hospital in Mourmelon over Christmas, he had double pneumonia. It was like one of those romance novels.'

'How is pneumonia romantic?' Grace asked while Maggie just snorted with laughter.

Ally carried on as if she hadn't heard them. 'And now he's back on the line and I'm here too and it's just perfect. Oh, you won't believe how I've changed since we last saw each other in Holland.'

She wasn't the only one changed by love. George Luz had been temporarily transferred from 1st Platoon of Easy Company to act as 2nd Battalion's radio man and had also been given the additional duty of divvying out the supply packs of chocolate, cigarettes and socks amongst the different units. It gave him a certain amount of freedom and access to army vehicles so inevitably he spent a lot of time hanging around the hospital and the Red Cross Club. If it had been just a few months earlier, Grace would have said that he was mooning over Maggie but that would suggest that any affection was unrequited. Rather than her previous disdain, Maggie seemed to be almost tolerating his company and during her breaks she could often be found sharing a cigarette with him. This was a serious development where Maggie was concerned as she liked to keep her liaisons brief.

The second time he stopped by Maggie and Grace were conveniently on their break which Grace suspected she had arranged purposefully as she had also suggested that they take their tea in the Red Cross Club which was empty during the day.

After few minutes of subtle clock-watching on Maggie's part they heard the sound of a jeep pull up and few minutes later George entered accompanied by Webster.

'Morning, girls,' said George with a grin and a wink.

'Twice in as many days,' commented Grace. 'You might as well transfer to our unit.'

'And I would fit right in, 'cor blimey, I'm a limey. Covent Garden 'ere we come!' He slipped into what was actually a passable cockney accent, his skills at imitation making themselves known.

Even Maggie smiled a little. 'Only mildly offensive, George.'

'We're supposed to be collecting a few ration packs,' said Webster. 'And the mail.'

'The stuff's in the back,' said George waving to the stockroom behind them. 'Web, why don't you and Grace get a start on that. I'm going to head over to the quartermasters and track down that 2nd Battalion mail.'

Without a word Maggie slipped from her seat and followed him out, as if it were completely normal and she owed no one an explanation.

Webster obediently started packing the heavy bricks of chocolate into boxes. He nodded after George. 'He's in love with her.'

'Isn't everyone?' said Grace, ducking into the stockroom after him.

'Typical Luz, always aiming too high.'

'I don't know. I think she like him. I think she thinks he's funny.' Grace shrugged. 'Maybe I've got it all wrong.'

'I don't suppose you can ever really know what's going on in other people's relationships,' he said.

'Not even you, with your great powers of observation?' she teased, trying to regain the element of light-heartedness into the conversation.

'Can't see through closed doors.'

This was another example of Webster's astounding ability to see to the heart of things. He could be disconcertingly accurate when he wasn't swept away in his own intelligence. Grace looked at him more closely and saw that he seemed to have lost some of that self-confidence that had been with him even as recently as a couple of days ago when they had last met.

'What's up?' she asked.

'Nothing.' He shook of her concerns. 'It's just strange being back is all.'

'I thought you were looking forward to it?'

'Yeah, yeah. I was, I mean, it's great. It's great being back. It's just things are a little different, that's all. The guys…'

'Who?' Grace asked with something like aggression but was really just her protective streak.

'I'm not gonna give you names!' he protested. 'Jesus, that'd be like running to my mom about the kids who stole my lunch money.'

'Sorry, sorry.' This was exactly what Liebgott had warned her about. Sticking her oar in where it wasn't wanted. She went back to packing boxes silently.

They were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door frame which echoed around the large empty room. They both looked up at the same time but only Grace's breath caught in the back of her throat as she saw Nixon , even more dishevelled than he had been in Belgium if that were possible. She wondered if the whole breathlessness situation was always going to happen every time she caught a glimpse of him, if so it was going to get very tiring.

Webster stood to a sort of lazy attention but Nixon quickly waved him down. 'At ease, Webster.'

'Come by for some chocolate, Nix?' Grace asked carefully trying to use the same tone she used with all the other men. 'Or the company?'

'Oh, definitely the company,' he grinned. 'But actually I could use your help with something, Grace. Outside.'

'Of course,' she said. 'You'll be okay here for a minute won't you David?'

He was looking at her strangely, measuring her up and using those incredibly annoying powers of observation to dig up her secrets. 'Sure. I can hold the fort.'

'Good.'

She left the building with Nixon aware that Webster was perfectly capable of connecting the dots and was probably doing so right this second. Still she couldn't really bring herself that mile a minute thing it had started doing whenever Nixon was in spitting distance.

They'd barely made it round the corner and into relative privacy before his lips were on hers. It took a few seconds for her to catch up with him and bring her arms into a more comfortable position around his neck. She couldn't help herself, she giggled into his mouth and he pulled away a couple of centimetres.

'What?'

'You don't hang about do you?'

'I've missed you.'

That was the right answer so she kissed him again. It was different to every kiss that had come before, opened mouthed and hot, his tongue creeping in to search the crevices of her mouth. This wasn't the way they kissed in the movies; this was the way you kissed when you couldn't bear to even break for air. If this was three weeks apart she wondered what a more protracted absence could do to them.

'So what was it you wanted my help with?' Grace said when they had finally broke apart long enough to start up a proper conversation.

'That pretty much covered it,' he said with a self-satisfied grin. 'Hey, you seemed pretty cosy with Private Webster back there.'

'Was that a question?' He favoured her with one of his patented sardonic looks. 'We saw a bit of each other in Aldbourne, exchanged a few letters while he was in the hospital.'

'Saw a bit of each other?' He was trying to keep casual, she could tell by the way he averted his gaze, suddenly finding his boots scuffing the cobbles strangely fascinating. She bit away a smile not wanting to let on how much this tiny display of jealous thrilled her.

'Yeah, you know, went to the pub, to the cinema. Saw each other.'

'Did you kiss him?'

'Of course I did. He paid for the cinema tickets.'

He laughed, one of the few times she'd heard him do so without bitterness or sarcasm. It burst out of him suddenly, like it snuck up and took him by surprise and Grace could see the flash of his white teeth in blackness of his beard.

'Jesus, no wonder you've got half of Easy Company running round after you. You know, your friend Maggie, she's beautiful. I've seen her. She sits up there all untouchable like she's made of glass or something. That's what makes her beautiful. But you, you're beautiful because you're obtainable.'

'Are you saying I'm a slapper?'

Again, he laughed. 'No! A man can look at you and he can imagine taken you back home with him. Marrying you.'

This was straying into dangerous territory so she decided to change the subject. 'It's my birthday on Saturday.'

'Really? How old are you going to be?'

'Twenty-three.'

'Huh. I always thought you were older.'

She frowned. 'That's not what you're supposed to say.' Though she knew what she meant. She felt that since her last birthday, celebrated in a Nissan hut in Scotland she had aged more than a year. More like a decade.

'Sorry,' he said. 'So what can I get the birthday girl? How about a stack of Hershey bars? We had a classy pair of silver candlesticks somewhere around the place but I think Speirs swiped 'em.'

'What do I need a pair of candlesticks for?'

'What does your sister need a pair of candlesticks for? Because that's where he's sent them.' From what Grace has heard, the family home that Lillian and Speirs planned to buy once the war was over was going to be completely furnished by Speirs' almost kleptomaniac approach to looting. 'How about this, I'll share a bottle of whiskey with you.'

'_Share? _It's my birthday and you'll only _share_?' She put on some mock outrage. 'I gave you a whole one for Christmas.'

'That's different. You're not the one dangerously dependent on the stuff.'

Already, she could tell that was going to be a point of contention between them; his acknowledgment of the problem and his unwillingness to do anything about it, her unwillingness to bring it up. She changed the subject quickly. 'Anyway, I'm going to refuse your kind offer because I already have birthday plans. I'm going dancing.'

'I hate dancing.'

'Well, I love it. And your presence isn't required; I've already had several offers.'

'Was Webster one of them?'

'I knew that was going to get you jealous!' she cried with glee.

'Curious isn't the same as jealous.'

Grace stood. 'Well, Maggie and I are going to be at Red Cross Club at 7 on Saturday night, if you feeling like popping down with my half of that bottle of whiskey.'

'I might do. Between you and me, I've heard rumours we're being whisked off the line by Friday.'

'As an Intelligence officer aren't you warned against sharing titbits of information like that with your girlfriend?'

'Hey, Grace?'

She turned back to him. 'Yep?'

'Webster? Seriously? The kid's got himself a big mouth.'

'Guess I've got myself a type.'

He had to get back to the line and she had a shift which she was already late for but that didn't stop her from all but skipped back inside where she found not only Webster but George and Maggie staring at her expectantly.

'I don't know what to say,' said George theatrically. 'Only that my heart is broken. I thought if you weren't going to for me at least you'd have the decency to pick another enlisted man, but no, you're like all the other girls, only sweet on officers.'

Grace flushed head to toe red and glared sharply at Webster who seemed to be avoiding looking her directly in the eye. 'What did you tell them?'

'Just what I saw. I didn't realise it was a secret.'

'It's not.'

'Good,' said Maggie. She was perched up on the counter of the bar and her feet were swinging freely beneath her. She looked lighter and happier than she had in a long while. 'Because I expect to hear all the horrifying details later this evening.'

George checked his watch. 'Hey, Web, we gotta get all this shit moving. How's about you take the first few boxes out to the jeep and I'll uh… just count the rest of these, make sure we got enough.'

It was a thinly veiled excuse to spend just a few more minutes alone with Maggie but Webster accepted it without complaint. If there was one upside to Grace's relationship with Nixon becoming common knowledge to counter-act all the inevitable gossip it would engender in George Luz's hands, it was that it was now probably that she would be able to use it to tease some information out of Maggie about her own curious love life.

Grace grabbed a box and so did Webster, following her out to the jeep parked outside.

'So that's the secret boyfriend.'

Grace turned and found Webster regarding her with a critical eye. Was it critical? Jealous? Disappointed? Just plain curious? Why was he so bloody difficult to read? She couldn't stop her face flushing bright red all the same.

'Captain Nixon? You know he went to Yale.'

'And?'

'Harvard man, there's always going to be a rivalry.'

'Is that your only objection to him?'

He shrugged. Luckily George and Maggie follow them out. The skin around her mouth was rubbed slightly pink from his stubble and he definitely looked pleased with himself as he hopped into the jeep.

'See you girls later,' he waved.

Despite being late for their shift they watched as the jeep pulled away. Without looking at her, Maggie said, 'Captain Nixon, well, you are a dark horse.'

'Two words for you, Mags – George Luz.'

'Shut up.' But there was the smallest trace of a grin playing across her friend's face.

**As requested by caught-offsides some Luz/Maggie. I don't know if anyone would be interested but I've sorted started writing a parallel story about Maggie and George.**

**Next chapter may contain some content which could slip the rating up to M. I don't know if I'm going to brave enough to write a sex scene or just cop out and "fade to black".**

**Please review if you have time x**


	22. Chapter 22

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. This is based on the mini-series and is in no way connected to real life.**

The list of new things that Grace Barnes had done in the year since her last birthday would probably be a mile long if she ever decided to write it down. She had qualified as a combat nurse, she had amputated limbs, lost her brother, lost friends, gained some more friends, crossed the Channel, lost her virginity, drunk stolen champagne from the bottle. The list was full of highs and lows though unfortunately the lows were the ones taking their toll on her face.

There was a tiny shaving mirror propped up on the dresser of the room she shared with Maggie in the attic of the hospital. It was the only mirror they had and woefully inadequate when trying on a new dress. She backed up trying to get as much of her body reflected as possible, until the back of her knees knocked into the bedstead and she almost tripped herself up.

She worried that the bright red of the dress, which once would have been so certain to compliment her, made her look washed out.

Maggie strode into the room breaking her self-absorbed reverie. She was still dressed in her uniform having just come off shift and Grace would have to wait for her to get changed as they had agreed to walk down to the Red Cross Club together.

'Do I look older?' Grace asked, her fingers tracing the imperceptible lines around her eyes.

Maggie sighed. 'Please don't say things like that, you know, I'm older than you.'

'Fine. Do I look pretty?'

'Yes. But know that fishing for compliments is unattractive.'

Grace turned fully to look at her sprawled across the bed, hair in disarray and still looking breathtakingly gorgeous. 'How do you do it, then? Make every man with a five mile radius fall in love you?'

'Confidence, my love. Step into the room with the unshakeably belief that you are most important thing in it. Believe hard enough and eventually it'll become true.' She stood and began shaking herself out of her uniform. 'But you don't want every man you just want one and I can help you with that.'

With a frown Grace watched Maggie reaching under the bed and coming out with a parcel wrapped in brown paper and chucked it at her. She caught it with a fumble.

'What is it?'

'It's a present, you have to unwrap it.'

Grace used her scissors to snap through the string, the paper unfolded to reveal a nest of peach coloured silk. She carefully picked out each item and laid them on the bed; stockings, bra, French knickers.

'They're lovely Maggie and they must have cost a fortune…'

'They did but don't thank me.'

'No, thank you. Thank you so much. But what am I going to _do_ with them?'

'Wear them under your dress and you won't have to "do" anything. That'll all be down to Captain Nixon.'

'Who says he's going to see what's under my dress?'

Maggie gave her a look which told her she could see right through all her bluffing and blushing. It had been nearly two months since that night a Dover and somehow Grace had a feeling that tonight would be the night for a repeat performance. If she could just gather up her courage and put away that nagging voice that sounded a lot like her mother's telling her that this was wrong.

Maggie dressed swiftly and did her make-up with practiced ease so they were out of the hospital and following the other nurses to the Red Cross Club in no time at all. It was a miracle they were even going. The whole week Grace had been waiting with baited breath for their new matron to turn around and condemn them both the night shifts but by keeping quiet and out of sight for most of the time they had managed to avoid it.

Ally and her American nurses had worked hard with the rest of the Red Cross members turning the room which had once been a tiny French café into something resembling a dance hall.

It wasn't quite packed, mostly nurses, doctors and other hospital staff some dressed in civvies like Grace and Maggie, most in uniform, some French girls dolled up and hoping to land a well-paid American, and a handful of 101st men including some Easy Company men who had made a home propping up the bar. No one had bothered to break out their Class As so the overall effect was rather shabby. Smoke hung low beneath a ceiling already stained yellow with nicotine. There was a dance floor the size of a postage stamp on which a few couples rotated to a slow-paced Glenn Miller track winding out of an old record player.

Maggie glanced around with something a bit less like wonder. 'Well, it's not exactly the Tower Ballroom, is it?'

'As long as there's a bar do you really care?'

Her friend smiled. 'True.'

'Grace! Maggie!' It was a voice they recognised.

'Did someone mention a bar?' said Maggie before disappearing off to the little cluster of Easy Company men.

Leaving Grace to turn and face Ally alone. She was giggling and sitting upon the lap of a sturdy looking paratrooper. 'Where'd Maggie go?' she asked.

Grace gestured vaguely. 'She saw someone she knew.'

'Don't tell me Maggie has a man as well!' She jumped up from her perch on the man's lap as enthusiastically as if he had been an armchair. 'So, what do you think? Pretty neat, huh? Just what the boys need when coming off the line.'

'It's amazing, Ally. How did you manage to organise this all?' Grace asked.

'Oh, it was nothing,' she smiled. 'A girl from the USO back in Mourmelon gave me this box full of records and I thought I might as well put them to good use. Oh.' She dragged her paratrooper to his feet. 'This is Charlie. My Charlie. Doesn't he have nice teeth?'

'Lieutenant Charlie Havis; I'm in Fox Company.'

He didn't seem to embarrassed by that introduction and as Grace politely shook his hand she had to agree that he did have a very nice teeth. And nose and mouth, even his ears were very nice. In fact, the only physical imperfections seemed to be unappealingly watery grey eyes and slightly weak chin.

'Well, it was nice to meet you,' said Grace. 'But I should leave you two to it. Great job, Ally!'

The Easy Company men in the corner which included George, Joe Liebgott, Floyd Talbert and Webster however despite the occasion and the fact that Maggie was bringing in the drinks they all looked faintly depressed.

'Hi, guys,' Grace said as she walked over. 'What's up?'

'Nothing,' said Webster accepting a pint from Maggie. 'Just sick of wading from the chickenshit raining down on us from Battalion.'

'Yeah, can't wait to get back to Mourmelon before they change their minds,' said Talbert.

'But we're not here to talk about that,' said Maggie. 'I thought we were here to have a good time. And…' She trailed off and stared somewhere over Grace's shoulder. 'Oh, look who it is.'

Nixon had just walked in, brushing a few loose flakes of snow off his jacket. He had made the least effort of all, not even bothering to shave leaving Grace to suspect he rather liked the beard. With him came Harry Welsh.

Grace jumped to her feet and flung her arms around not Nixon, but Harry whose face was split into the familiar gap-toothed grin and returned the hug.

'You're back!' she squealed in delight. 'You're back far too early, but you're back!'

'I could stand another minute in the damn hospital. As soon as I could walk I was out and on my way back to the continent. I know, I know, I need my head examining, Nix has already cracked all the jokes.'

'And you couldn't get Dick to come?' she asked.

Harry laughed. 'You're kidding, right? It's lights out at nine-thirty for him. Hey, I'm just going to say hi to the guys. See how they've been keeping in my absence.'

The removal from the conversation felt like a bit of a ploy as he parted from Nixon with what can only be described as a significant look. Someone had obviously been supplied with some details. Grace didn't know how to feel about that; the thought of Nixon talking to Harry about her.

They were quiet for a few moments. Awkward, or at least she was. Trying to avoid looking at him yet not wanting to look anywhere else.

'You look nice,' he leaned in to whisper.

'Nice? I was aiming for more than nice.' She had not fretted in front of the mirror for "nice".

'Beautiful. How's that?'

'It'll do. Will you dance with me?'

'I told you I don't dance, especially not to this music.' She pretended to pout and he rubbed a hand over her arm. Even that small movement sent a fluttering feeling through her insides. 'You go and have fun. I'll watch.'

Grace shrugged. It sounded a little like he was sending her off to play. Well, if he didn't want to spend time with her on her birthday she knew how to have a good time without him and she walked back over to the rest of the group.

Taking another drink from Maggie she was only dimly aware of Nixon and Harry taking one of the few tables in the corner of the room, but a discrete glance over her shoulder told her that he was watching her. Harry was chatting away seemingly oblivious to the fact that Nixon's eyes remained firmly stuck on Grace. He caught her looking and winked. It filled Grace with purpose. If he wanted to watch she was going to put on a show.

She downed her gin in one quick gulp and stood up, declaring loudly. 'I've been here fifteen minutes and not one of you has asked me to dance. Who's going to fix that?'

It was a challenge to the rest of boys. George Luz had had a good few days to get the rumours about her and Nixon circulating, they had to know or at least suspected that they were together, but which of them was going to be brave enough to dance with her in front of him.

Floyd Talbert, her favourite dog lover accepted the challenge with a wide, charming smile. 'Well, I'll do the honours ma'am.'

She practically fluttered her eyelashes, determined to lay it on thick tonight. 'Sergeant Talbert, I always knew you were a brave man. While I'm gone someone needs to get me in another drink.'

Being on a dance floor even as small as it was, listening to music even on a tiny record player and laughing with her friends, reminded Grace of her old life before the war. Sometimes during the course of the evening she would even forget that Nixon was there watching her, but then occasionally she'd spin around and catch his eye where he was sitting in his corner with Harry.

After Floyd Talbert and another drink, she decided that she'd pick on Webster, forcing him up on to the dance floor with a little flirtatious cajoling. The dance wasn't a slow one, therefore giving him no impression that her dancing with him meant anymore to her than it had with Floyd. However, it wasn't fast enough that he wasn't able to talk. Unfortunately.

'So is this real?' he asked mid-way through a spin.

'What?'

'You and Captain Nixon?'

'I don't know. Maybe.'

'Do you think that's a good idea?'

Grace tried her hardest to keep her feet moving but she couldn't help missing a step. Were they really going to do this here? She didn't say anything, just let him continue to the point he was inevitably going to reach.

'You know he's married, right?'

He was looking at her with hope in his bright blue eyes like he was wishing she would turn around and say that she had no idea, wishing she was still the kind of girl who would be appalled by the news.

Instead she smiled brightly and said, 'Yes. I'm aware.'

'Right.' Luckily, the dance was coming to an end and she could find her way out of this conversation. 'Well, he's been watching you all night, maybe you should go to him.'

'Maybe I will.'

With what she hoped were confident strides she walked across the room and sat at Harry and Nixon's table without preliminary greetings.

'So Harry, how was England?' She directed her attention wholly on Harry and tried not to even look in Nixon's direction.

'The weather was beautiful,' he said with cheery ignorance. 'Rain, rain and more rain. I swear to God I've grown gills.'

'Beats snow,' said Nixon, he was nursing a glass that was all but empty.

'I guess. And my Kitty sure does look a picture in a wet dress.'

The oft talked about Kitty was an Irish girl working in a munitions factory whom Harry had met while on furlough in London a year ago. Grace had never met her but as long as she had known him, Harry had been able to steer any topic of conversation back towards Kitty.

'You didn't file for a special license and get married while you were back?' asked Grace.

'That's what I told him he should have done,' said Nixon with a grin. 'Tie her down before she sees the error of her ways.'

'Shut the hell up, she doesn't need tying down, she knows what she's got. Besides we're both Catholics, nobody's doing anything quick in a Catholic Church.' He got to his feet. 'I'm going to get another drink. Lew, you want anything?'

'No, I'm okay.' Harry raised an eye brow to express surprise but didn't say anything, retreating to the bar.

Left alone with him Grace no longer deny that it had now gotten to the point where even without touching, she could feel her skin prickling, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, her heart rate increase just from being near Nixon. Her fingers itched to crawl across the table and stroke the back of his hand which rested just a few inches from hers.

'Well, I think I just witnessed a first,' said Grace trying to keep her voice normal. 'You refusing a drink.'

'I know. I think I'm growing as a person.' His finger traced a lazy circle around the glass in front of him. 'Actually, I was going to try and convince you to come back to base with me and I think you're too sensible to come if I'm driving drunk.'

She nodded to the glass he'd already drained which was on top of the frequent swigs he'd been taking for his flask all evening. 'As opposed to driving just a little bit tipsy.'

A smirk, a shrug. It was infuriating to see him so sure of himself, so sure that she would follow him even when she wasn't even sure herself.

'So, are you going to come?' he asked. 'I promise I'll be a perfect gentleman.'

'That's exactly what you said the last time we spent the night together and look what happened then.'

'Yeah, you ended up being less than a lady and I ended up paying for two rooms when we only needed one.'

One day a time would come when she wouldn't blush every time he mentioned that night in Dover. Though she suspected he mentioned it so frequently precisely because she blushed so much.

'I'm not sneaking off with you,' she said firmly. 'We're at a dance. It's my birthday. You need to dance first.'

Someone had changed the record. The room was now filling with the sound of a mournfully Billie Holiday track should only heard a handful of times on the AFN. Nixon thought about it for a moment before taking her hand.

'Really?' she said hopefully.

'Quickly. Before I change my mind.'

And he dragged her onto the floor and pulled her close.

He wasn't a bad dance, just a little uncoordinated but he had a good sense of rhythm and it felt amazing to be in his arms. Grace groaned at her own treacherous thoughts; she was acting like a lovesick teenager. But there in lay the problem, she had never had crushes before, never written desperate little love poems about boys in school in the back of her exercise book. Oh, she had flirted and danced and kissed with the best of them but she had never _cared_ before. It was an unsettling feeling to be so swept away by it all.

'Is that enough?' he asked after about a minute and a half.

'You can't even get through the whole song? I'd be insulted if—'

He cut her off with a swift kiss. Not long, not extravagant but public enough for the whole room to have got a look.

Grace frowned up at him. They'd stopped dancing. 'You just kissed me in front of everyone.'

'Guess I just did.' And far from ashamed he looked quite pleased with himself. 'Now are you coming back with me? Remember I still owe you that bottle of whiskey.'

'What about Harry?'

'He can get a ride back. Or walk. I couldn't give a fuck. Are you coming?'

She swallowed, trying to introduce so moisture to her now very dry mouth, and nodded. 'Just let me tell Maggie I'm leaving.'

She twisted herself out of him and away across the dance floor to the bar where Maggie was watching with a gin and a smirk. 'Everything going well?' she asked.

'I think so. I'm heading off. If I don't make it back in time will you cover for me with the Major?'

Maggie pretended to think about it before nodding. 'Alright. I suppose you've covered for me enough times.'

Grace hugged her. 'Thank you.'

In hindsight the hug was a bit weird. They weren't the types of friends to go for physical affection much but Grace was feeling in a strange mood. Really strangely happy. She hopped back across the room to the door where the man who probably had a lot to do with her strange mood was waiting.

They didn't really talk much as they drove back to the small suburban where the paratroopers were billeted. To be fair he was a little too drunk to drive but the road was empty and Grace wasn't in the mood to be sensible. Going with him had driven her reckless.

He led her into the quiet house with a finger on his lips. 'Dick's probably asleep upstairs,' he whispered.

'And Ron?'

'He sometimes goes for a night-time stroll. Didn't your sister tell you that? It's creepy.'

In the gloom, Grace could see the house had been completely gutted; no furniture, no curtains. The carpet had been ripped up from the staircase and she took off her heels so as not to make a noise on the bare floorboards.

He pulled her down the corridor to his room which, like the rest of the house was dark and minimal, peeling wallpaper curling with damp and rotten window frames but it had a bed dressed in army blankets. The sight of that bed suddenly made Grace very nervous.

Nixon pulled off his jacket and crossed over to his footlocker from which he pulled out a bottle. 'As promised. And it's full. I know how to treat a girl.'

She took it from him though if she was honest she'd already had enough gin that night. 'Thanks.'

The sudden coolness of the atmosphere caused by her nervousness was obvious even to him and he smiled slightly. 'You don't have to stay if you don't want to. I can drive you back now.'

'No, I want to stay.' And she did, desperately. She also wanted to conjure up some of that same confidence she had displayed during the first night they had spent together when she had all but forced herself on him.

'Okay.' He stood with his hands in his pockets still a good few metres from her.

'It might help if you came over here and kissed me.'

'Good suggestion.' The gap between them was closed in two of his large strides.

They were good at kissing. It was comforting and exhilarating all at the same time. Would his kisses always make her feel like this? Like she was burning inside? His mouth slide from hers down her neck spreading the heat as he went. He growled in frustration when the neckline of her dress prevented him from touching anymore of her skin. And she had to concur.

'It unties here.' Her hands dropped to the tie-waist of her dress but he was already there, wrestling her out of the knot.

The dress fell open and the cold air prickled the newly revealed skin. The way the fabric now hung from her arms framed her body in a way that invited his close scrutiny. She suddenly felt impossibly conscious of the bloody underwear Maggie had forced her in. She felt exposed, like a pin-up, like Betty Grable hung up on the barracks wall and not in a good way.

His fingers trailed along the edge of her stockings where fabric met her bare thigh. A smile tugged at his lips. 'I like this.'

'It was a birthday present.'

'If it was Webster tell him he's got great taste.'

Grace blushed. 'It was Maggie.'

'God bless Maggie.'

He kissed her again but this time his hands had uninhibited access to her whole body, searing fingerprint patterns on her bare shoulders, the swell of her breasts, circling her belly button and playing with the lacy edge of her underwear. She was getting almost dizzy from breathlessness. And cold.

She pushed him away momentarily. 'I'm sorry but I'm bloody freezing.'

He felt the goosebumps which were prickling up along her arms. It was after all, February in Northern France. 'Jesus, sorry. Here, get in the bed.'

As he instructed, she tucked herself under the coarse blankets. Her skin was hypersensitive, alive to every sensation and the material felt as if it was rubbing her skin raw with every tiny movement.

'Better?' he asked.

'Still freezing. How about you sympathise by taking some of your clothes off too?'

'Okay.'

She watched silently without touching as he sat on the edge of the bed to tackle the laces of his jump boots. Did they take a little longer than usual because she made him just as nervous as he made her? Or did it just seem longer because of the heavy seed of anticipation nestling in her stomach?

The first time they had spent the night together had been frantic. She hadn't been drunk but she had been out of herself somehow. There had been a desperation to their movements and clothing had only been removed as and when access was required. She hadn't imagined the simple art of seeing his fingers clumsily unbutton his shirt, nor that there would ever be anything quite so captivating as the line of his collar bone.

Only when they were on an equal footing, both down to their underwear did she allow him to slide under the blankets with her.

'Are you happy now?' he said with a grin his own face just inches from hers.

'Very.'

'Ow!' She had slapped his hands away from the tops of stockings. 'What the hell was that for?'

'Don't touch them. They cost an absolute fortune and I don't trust you not to ladder them.'

'I know how to take off a woman's stockings!'

Still he watched patiently as she very carefully rolled them down her leg and folded them neatly on the chest of drawers beside the bed.

'Will you let me do the rest?'

She nodded. 'Yes. Go ahead.'

She had to lean forward slightly so that he could reach the clasp of her bra and involuntarily she sucked in a deep breath. Never before had she felt so vulnerable. But what was she scared of? She trusted him with every part of herself, this was just an extension of that. Still it was strange, to be so familiar with her own body and then seeing the effect it had on him.

When all her clothes were finally off and so were his he stopped and lent away from her as if he were appraising a picture.

'Wow. You're just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.'

It was hardly the most original thing ever said to a woman but Grace was done with talking. There really wasn't more to say, nothing more to think about except the way his hands were crawling up the inside of her thighs, inching closer to the place where she really wanted to be touched. Nothing to say except -

She suddenly pushed him off. 'Wait. I don't want to get into… _trouble_.'

He frowned and Grace was worried she was actually going to have to spell it out before a light of understanding switched on and he crawled back down the bed to his footlocker and came back with a condom.

'Army issue.'

At some point in the night the thought flitted across her mind that she had become something she had never thought she would be, something she had never considered before meeting him – the fabled other woman. The mythical mistress. The thought struck her cold for a moment as she considered what everyone would say, what everyone would think. But then he was so present (he was inside her, how could you be more present?) and everything else in the world so far away, in different countries, across oceans, miles away in other rooms, that it really stopped mattering. She accepted things as they were. She gave in to this new reality which was just her and this man.

That time in Dover had happened because of her own frustration, a need for action, for something, anything to happen at a time when she was feeling so helpless. True, it was doubtful whether it would have happened if it had been anyone but Nixon in the next room, but still it hadn't been him specifically that she wanted. Now she wanted him.

She raised her legs to pull him closer, wrapping herself around him but still he wasn't near enough or touching her enough. She could feel the moment with every single one of her senses; the sight of their limbs, pale shadows in the dark, entwined together; the sound of caught breath and the awful creak of the bed under them; the mounting taste and smell of sweat; the ball of electricity nestled somewhere inside her shooting off little sparks of sensation right up to the tips of her fingers, to the ends of her curled toes.

Later, Grace found herself dozing. She was vaguely aware of his hands playing with hair, fingers gently raking through her curls. Practically, she should be mildly annoyed that he was messing up the careful arrangement that she would inevitably have to sort through in the morning, but she was so sated and so content that she couldn't really bring herself to care. It was a strange feeling, like she was floating a couple of inches out of her body, near the earth but not quite on it. She was extremely tired.

Edging even closer to sleep, she felt him pressing his mouth against her ear. 'I love you,' he breathed.

'What was that?'

Obviously he had thought she was a sleep because he pulled back a little. 'Nothing. Go to sleep.'

It had only been a breath but he had said and she had heard it. And when he was ready to say it again, when she was fully conscious, she would be ready too.

Grace settled down for sleep with a smallest twitch of a smile on her face.

**This chapter took me forever to write and I still don't think it's any good. I think they're getting sickeningly romantic. I'm going to have to throw obstacles in their way. **

**Thank you StanziWood, caught-offsides and SparkELee for the reviews! They mean so much to me. Please review if you have time. x **


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Grace woke with the sun even if she couldn't see it through the thick sack curtains, it was a force of habit. Nixon didn't wake. He lay flat on his stomach snoring gently into his pillowed arm.

He looked pale and young and very peaceful, his body rising and falling rhythmically. She had seen him like this once before, on the train back from Dover. He had fallen asleep with his head pressed against the misted window, succumbing to the old soldier's trick of sleeping whenever he stopped moving. She had seen in him there the little boy he had once been, before all the disappointments that adulthood had brought, when he had been a little less sarcastic and a little less guarded.

She threw off the covers and shivered in the cold room, grappling blindly for her clothes. The heavy curtains shut out the light but did nothing to keep at bay the icy temperature. She had spent the last night dressed in Nixon's clothes. When the sweat had cooled on their bodies and she had started shivering he had dressed her himself while she had done her best not to giggle so loudly as to wake Dick in the next door room.

Nixon's hands had had a second go of tracing up the plains of her thighs as he pulled up the trousers and uselessly buckled them over her skinny waist just so he could kiss her stomach again. The shirt had been buttoned slowly, his fingers gently tickling her breasts as he covered them in much the same way he had revealed them.

Now Grace clung to the too big clothes as she hastily dressed herself properly. The alcohol from the previous night had dried out her mouth and there was no water to be had in the room and she was too scared to go down on her own. It was early but she knew both Dick and Ron were morning people.

'Nix.' She nudged him but it was like nudging a rock. He grunted and screwed his eyes shut even tighter. She whacked him harder, enough to get a muffled swear word out of him. 'Lewis, get up. You have to drive me back.'

'Okay. 10 minutes.' But he didn't move.

'No, now. I'm going to be late.'

'10 minutes.'

It was obvious that 10 minutes in Nixon's book was probably closer to an hour and Grace really was very late. She threw a pillow at him. Even that didn't shift him.

'Fine,' she snapped. 'I'm going to walk.'

'I'll take you in 10 minutes.'

Ignoring him, she walked out of the room and straight into Dick.

'Good morning,' he said as if they had casually bumped into each other outside the butchers in Aldbourne.

'Good morning,' she squeaked in reply. 'I was just…'

Dick stopped her with a look. 'Grace, I have the room next door, I know what you were "just".'

They fell into a silence so awkward it was painful. Grace felt her face getting hot around the cheeks and under the eyes where she knew she would be blushing bright red.

Dick shuffled his feet nervously. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you.'

'It's okay. I'm not embarrassed,' she lied. 'But I have to go. I'm late for a shift at the hospital.'

'Can I drive you?'

On the one hand it was hard to imagine anything that could be more painful than continuing this encounter, on the other she really was very late and Maggie could only do so much to cover for her. If she wasn't embarrassed and she wasn't ashamed then she might as well start proving it.

Grace nodded. 'Yes, thank you.'

He drove in silence for the first mile or so, keeping his concentration on the potholed road ahead and the crunching gears of the ancient jeep. It reminded Grace painfully of the time she and Lillian had missed the train back home from Birmingham once and their father had come to collect them. It had been all Grace's fault, drunk on the freedom of being away from their parents for once, she had allowed herself to be convinced by a couple of boys to stop in the pub for a drink and let the time whirl away until they were running down the platform, chasing a train which had long since passed. When their father had arrived in a borrowed car an hour and a half later and smelt the drink on their guilty breath, he hadn't yelled but the car ride had been spent in miserable silence. Back home their mother had given them a speech about how they weren't behaving like the kind of young ladies they'd raised them to be, why couldn't they take some responsibility for their actions? That and the three weeks of the summer holidays spent practically locked indoors was awful but what truly stuck with Grace was her father's silence.

That same kind of quiet disappointment permeated the jeep now. It made Grace angry. What right had Dick to be disappointed in her? He was neither her father nor her brother, and besides she wasn't doing anything wrong, well, nothing every other serviceman wasn't doing across the globe.

'I think winter will be passing soon,' she said with a tight smile. 'I'm sure Germany will be beautiful in the spring.'

Dick said something vague and non-committal which was polite but still had the power to run a stake through the conversation. Grace realised that this was Dick and if she wanted to work out his true feelings about a subject she had to tackle him head on.

'Look, I know you don't approve,' she said. 'I'm not what you want for him…'

'You are what I want for him,' he interrupted suddenly but keeping his eyes straight on the road and hands tight on the wheel. 'But he's not what I want for you.'

Grace frowned. 'What do you mean by that?'

'I mean, I don't like to see you taken advantage of.'

'Taken…? Has he said something?'

'He doesn't say anything about you. I asked him not to.' He took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts and translating them into vocabulary it might be suitable for her to hear. 'I know how soldiers talk about girls.'

She snorted derisively. 'Good God, you sound like my maiden aunt! I don't know whose delicate sensibilities you think you're protecting but certainly not mine. I've seen just as much of this bloody war as you have, remember; and come out of it pretty well if you ask me. If that doesn't give me the right to make my own bloody mistakes…'

'So, Nix is a mistake?'

She froze mid-rant, angry words catching in her teeth as she realised the slip. Not exactly a subconscious one as she had considered the possibility several times, but certainly an unintended one. 'Maybe. I suppose I'll find out eventually.'

The flimsy acknowledgment that what she was doing as in some way morally reprehensible seemed to be enough to satisfy Dick, or perhaps he just didn't want to be yelled at again, because the rest of the journey continued without any more discussion. He parked haphazardly on the ragged outskirts of Hochfelden hospital and she thanked him politely. She climbed out but he didn't pull away immediately. Instead he leaned across the jeep and caught her with a rigidly intense blue stare.

'What I was trying to say is; you'll be good for him. You'll be really good for him. You'll listen and you'll make him laugh and maybe you'll teach him that the meaning of life isn't always at the bottom of a bottle. But what do you get out of it?'

'He's your best friend,' she said dumbly.

'Yeah, and I love the guy to death. He's been there standing at my right shoulder practically every day since I joined up, but I also know he's probably the most undependable fool I've ever met.'

Grace was late onto her shift but Maggie covered for her and as she was passed a handful of soiled bandages she was able to slip seamlessly into the hive of activity. Passing Maggie in the corridor she was favoured with a dirty wink. 'So the knickers worked alright, then?'

Grace pulled the corners of her tired mouth into a smile. 'The knickers worked just fine.'

It was everything else that was wrong. And clearly it showed on her face because Maggie stopped and asked, 'What? Didn't you have a good time? Is he not…?'

It took a second for it to click what Maggie was implying and another for her to vehemently cry, 'No! No. He's great. It was great. Everything is brilliant, when it's just us but… Everyone's going to be talking about us. He's someone's husband.'

'Someone who's not here!' Maggie insisted. 'She's in America and you are here. I don't know why you give a fuck what other people think. Now, I've got a penicillin round to work through. Keep out of the Major's way, she's looking to put someone on the night shift.'

The whole day after leaving Dick, Grace felt out of sorts, manifesting itself as a dazed expression and fingers that were all thumbs. She had ferociously defended her relationship with Nixon while still not being quite sure what that relationship was. By kissing her at the Red Cross Club he had made a statement which had to be deliberate. He was jealous of her friendship with David, in a cool, casual, characteristically Nixon way, but jealous none the less. He was laying a claim to her, it was as close to caveman behaviour as he was likely to get. If only he wasn't such as lazy bastard and had driven her back himself, she might have been able to wrangle a straight answer out of him. Something more effusive than "my wife doesn't figure". Instead she was coming away from another Nixon encounter completely in the dark.

Around midday she was called over by Major Smith with a curl of a finger. 'Barnes, get yourself to bed. I'm putting you on the nightshift.'

Then she turned back to her clipboard and Grace could tell she was dismissed so she sloped back out off th ward to the nurse's billet. She hated the nightshift, she always found it impossible to sleep in the day, but maybe come the night she would be a little less distracted.

Climbing the stairs up to her and Maggie's attic room, she stopped. Yes, there it was – the distinct sound of someone crying and not subtly either. It was coming from further down the corridor and it piqued Grace's curiosity. Crying was uncommon around here. There was a pretty much unspoken rule that if the men downstairs with lost limbs and blind eyes could contain themselves then what right did they have to unhappiness? In Normandy the girls had cried from homesickness, from shock and hunger and pounding exhaustion. But now they were safe and crying seemed unnecessary.

The door from behind which the sniffling cries was bleeding belonged to the room of a few of the American nurses. She knocked but there was no answer. Should she leave? Grace herself would hate for anyone to intrude on her like that but still, the protective streak in her made her want to find out what was wrong. Or maybe it was her nosy streak?

She pushed the door open and found Ally sprawled across her bed, her head buried deep in her pillow.

'Ally, what's wrong?'

She looked up and Grace could see that her face was completely red and streaky, she had obviously been crying for hours. 'Oh, Grace, it's you.'

'What on earth's the matter?'

'Oh, it's too awful!'

'Pull yourself together, Ally. Why don't you go and wash your face and we can talk sensibly.' It was what Matron would say, had said many times to the girls who flacked away under the pressure of constant bombardments in Normandy. She had said it several times to Grace herself. Matron had firmly believed that washing your face was a quick fix for all of life's upsets.

But Grace's harsh tones did nothing more than prompt Ally to cry even harder, uncontrollably to the point where she was gasping for air. At a complete loss at what to do now, Grace slumped down beside her and wrapped a comforting arm around her.

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. What is it? Is it news from home?'

Ally was hysterical now, teetering on that point where there were no longer tears just dry wails and it seems a physical impossibility to stop crying. She shook her head. She couldn't squeeze out any words.

'Is it your boyfriend?' Grace would be furious if she found out Ally had worked herself up into such a state over a boy, very nice teeth or not.

'I stole something,' she finally managed to gasp.

'You did what? Why?'

In answer, Ally lifted her pillow and shook it until several small packets fell out of the case.

Grace stared at the little pile of painkillers. Ally looked at her expectantly as if the drugs could put the situation into words she was too scared to reach for but Grace was still at a loss. Then she looked even closer, they were mild anti-inflammatory painkillers the kind they often used in post-operative cases and in theory and the right quantities they could also be used as an abortifacient.

Her eyes widened. 'Oh, Ally, you're not!'

The girl nodded glumly.

'And you were going to…?'

Another shamefaced nod.

'How stupid of you!'

That was echoed by a fresh wave of tears. Grace could hardly be angry at her for getting into the state she was in however, abortion was not only illegal but, if attempted alone, highly dangerous. You didn't have to be a nurse to know that. Of course, everyone knew someone who knew someone who had had an abortion, in Grace's case it was a girl in Lillian's year at school who had been given the address of a doctor by a friend of a cousin. The stories were always appalling; gin and scalding baths, coat hangers, lots of blood. Whatever the circumstances Grace felt certain that it had to be a last resort.

She patted Ally on the back and gently shushed her. 'Look, it's not the end of the world but it happens to lots of people. It happened to my sister.'

Ally's eyes turned to her hopefully. 'It did? What did she do?'

'She explained the situation to her boyfriend and now he's my brother-in-law.' Leaving out the part where she herself had all but berated him down the aisle. 'I know it won't be ideal when she delivers an eight pound baby after a six month pregnancy…'

And another torrent of tears. Would it never end? And it seemed it would not for this new hysteria lasted quite a few minutes. Grace checked her watch over Ally's shoulder and she felt her shoulder grow wet. Finally she managed to wheedle out the story; She had told Charlie, her boyfriend. She had told him, bursting with excitement for with the war nearly over she expected to find him quite prepared to do the decent thing and marry her, providing a home for them back in America. However, as far as Grace could tell, he had washed his hands of the matter and had even cast doubts on whether it was his responsibility at all. This enraged Grace because she knew Ally was completely incapable of infidelity. When she loved, she loved wholly and completely. That this cheap charmer thought he could not only break Ally's gentle heart but potential destroy her life was more than could be bared not least because he most likely would get off scot free. He hadn't even been that good looking.

Eventually, Ally was soothed into another lull and Grace was able to convince her to get some rest or else she'd be dead beat for nightshifts. With as much gentleness as she treated her patients Grace tucked her in.

'We'll sort it out tomorrow,' she said confidently before closing the door and leaving her to her sleep. She took the painkillers. She would have to find an opportunity on her next shift to slip them back where they belonged.

**StanziWood, caught-offsides and SparkELee you are absolute legends. I can't tell you how relieved your reviews make me feel. I am like the least self-assured writer there is, sometimes I can hardly bare to read back my own work. **

**Hope you keep reading x**


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Night shift slipped past tediously, broken up by penicillin rounds and paperwork. Grace saw Ally only fleetingly when she flitted into the ward to consult on some post-operative matter with Major Philips. Across the ward her eyes were rubbed red with crying and even though they did not speak, the urgency of her friend's problem would not leave nor the hastiness of her promise to fix it all come the morning. The more minutes to cross the clock, the more she thought about it the more she realised the impossibility of Ally's situation and began to emphasise with the decision she had made. Grace didn't condone it but she could understand it.

When dawn finally came, too soon and too slow, Grace was dead tired; she had been pinching herself awake for the past hour. She intended only to swing by the mess hall to grab a slice of toast before throwing herself into bed. However, the post had arrived. As she yawned her way through the mess hall, Eileen shoved a sheaf of envelope's into Grace's hands.

'First post dump since Belgium,' Irene grumbled. 'Makes you wonder if yours are getting through at the other end and the army aren't just chucking them in the sea for too much bother.'

The post had been notoriously unreliable as was proved by the fact that of the four letters Grace held in her hand, one was from David Webster from when he had been languishing in the replacement depot. The postmarks on in indicated that the poor battered thing had been bounced back and forth across Europe like a shuttlecock before finding its way to her well after the arrival of the man himself.

One letter, she could tell from the Derbyshire return address was from Dorothea's parents. Hopefully it was nothing more than a polite thank you for her previous correspondence rather than a quest for further details into the exact circumstances of their daughter's death.

The final two were from home, both written in Lillian's careful hand. The sight of these last letters chased away all Grace's exhaustion because she knew exactly what they must contain. She ran all the way to her room to tear them open in peace.

Responsibly, she got an hour or so's sleep, fraughtly trying to remind her mile-a-minute brain that she was tired. Once she had got all the rest she could, she cadged a lift with a supply truck down the road to the American camp.

She was lucky; orders for the 101st the head back to Mourmelon for a few weeks R&R had temporarily been rescinded from on high due to transport problems and the unit was still hanging around the outskirts of Haguneau. The boys she passed, once she had thanked her driver, were full of the lazy joy of being off the line. She passed a basketball game, an ugly slushy snowman, mean running by with bags of loot. They were drunk on the strange, unfamiliar sensation of being _safe_. They didn't have to duck as they walked across the road and could throw out the rules of light and sound discipline. Their excitement coloured the grey landscape of melting winter.

Though of course, some of them were just straight up drunk despite it only being ten in the morning. The town houses in which they were billeted had been completely stripped bare, the rule being if it wasn't nailed down it was up for grabs.

Grace caught a few wolf-whistles as she skidded through the streets. She stood out against this sea of reckless masculinity even in her unflattering khaki, but some of the catcalls sounded familiar and she looked up to see Joe Liebgott and David Webster hanging out of an upper storey window. She waved up at them.

'Hey, Marlene!' called Joe, his sharp face bright and cheerful for once. 'Why don't you come up for a spell?'

'Can't,' replied Grace. 'I'm looking for Captain Speirs.'

Joe chuckled darkly. 'Speirs? I heard it was Captain Nixon you was "looking for" these days.'

She flushed bright red, she couldn't help it. David jumped to her rescue by giving Joe a little shove which almost toppled him out of the window. 'Give it a rest, Joe.'

'Alright, alright. I know a lady never kisses and tells.'

'Come up,' David said again. 'Speirs will be coming round any minute to inspect the platoons, make sure we're not _all_ drunk on duty.'

'Your platoon leader won't mind?' she asked, not wanting to get either of them into trouble.

Joe shrugged carelessly. 'Nah, it's only old Malark since we lost that clueless Looey to General Taylor or wherever the fuck he went. A bit of female company would cheer us all up.'

'Because you're all so down in the dumps,' she said but let herself in all the same. She had her own reasons for being in a mind to celebrate.

The front door to the house was ajar, the lock broken in like a burglary and once inside Grace could see that the men had infested the place like rats. They were billeted in much the same condition as the nurses: makeshift bunks in old family homes but clearly this was a man's domain. The girls, despite their transitory life, always tried to make their quarters homey by keeping their belongings tidy and ordered no matter how short their stay. Here the men of second platoon had sprawled themselves across the house like raggedy gypsies. Whoever was one day coming back to this house would find it in a state of complete careless chaos; empty bottles, mountainous piles of cigarette butts and small fires heating up packets of rations.

Grace wrinkled her nose against the deep and permeating smell of tobacco and sour, unwashed bodies as David led her into what he described at their "humble abode". 'Humble's the word for it. Won't Speirs have anything to say about the mess when he comes around?'

Sergeant Malarkey answered as he strolled in, cigarette sagging loosely between his lips. 'Speirs ain't one of those officers overly concerned with how things look. He knows the important things. Though…' He frowned as he gazed around the space he was supposed to be commanding. 'It is looking especially shitty this morning. Hey, guys!' he called to his platoon. 'How's about we have a little spring clean.'

A low groan rose up from the men who were awake. But Malarkey had made up him mind and was using his flimsy power to rouse them.

Grace would have gladly helped in the clean-up. Since entering the house her fingers had been itching to start tidying the mess but Sergeant Malarkey gently steered her to one of the only available seats, a flabby armchair which belched dust when she upon it, and offered to fetch her a coffee.

She felt a little like a queen presiding over her subjects as she watched the clueless men stumble around making half-hearted attempts at tidying which mostly involved tossing full ashtrays out of windows.

Luckily, the session up was broken up by the arrival of a young, pale looking private with news.

Private Heffron, "Babe" as she remembered her liked to be called walked into the house looking slightly bemused.

'Hey, Babe,' said Malarkey. 'You see Captain Speirs while you were out there? He heading our way?'

'Uh… yeah.' The young man answered the question like it was difficult. 'I saw him. It was really weird.'

'Weird how?' asked Webster.

'He gave me these.' Babe reached into his pockets and pulled out three crisp packs of cigarettes, the good kind that officers got first dibs on, and a thick bar of chocolate. 'And then he smiled. At least I think he smiled. I saw his teeth.'

'You know what that means,' said Malarkey. 'You're a dead man, Babe.'

'What?!' he squealed.

'Everyone knows, if Speirs is handing out the smokes he's about to pull the trigger.'

Babe looked genuinely alarmed at the thought, his eyes flicking back forth between Malarkey, Liebgott and Webster who were all smirking.

'Don't worry,' said Grace. 'I just think he's in a really good mood.'

'His coming!' someone in the hallway called.

The platoon stood to a lazy attention and Grace almost found herself joining them as Speirs swept into the house.

Malarkey scampered forward to intercept his commanding officer. 'We were just fixing the place up, sir. It's not so bad…'

'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' Speirs waved him away. 'It's great. You want a cigarette?'

Malarkey nervously took one that was offered him. And a second and a third as they were further pushed on him. And a final one to tuck behind his ear.

Speirs offered the rest of the packet around to the assembled room before pushing further into the house. He stopped as he saw Grace ahead of him. 'Oh, you're here.'

'I'm guessing you got your mail today.'

'How could you tell?'

'Your face looks like it's about to break in two, you're grinning so wide,' she said though his face was only mirroring her own feelings. 'You should scale it back a bit, you're scaring the men.' More seriously she added, 'Congratulations, Ron.'

The hug she pulled him into was a little awkward, this was Speirs after all, but if marriage hadn't made him family, blood now certainly did. They were bond by this baby, tangling him permanently into her life.

Stiffly, he pulled away from her after a few brief seconds, his face flustered. 'I've got a photograph, do you want to see?'

He fished it out of his breast pocket where it lay next to his cigarettes and extra ammunition. The he had only had it for a few hours it was already well loved, battered, pushed up at the corners. His grip lingered on it as he passed it over, as if wary about relinquishing it to less than certain hands.

The picture showed Lillian, smiling not up at the camera but down at the small bundle held to her chest. She was angle the baby towards the camera, giving it a view of her son's tiny scrunched face.

Grace gazed at the photograph and fell in love. Her nephew. It was strange to think that somewhere out there, all the miles back home was this perfect little creature who was now part of her family. In this photograph he was nothing more than a soft focus blue; a round, hairless head, small, half-closed eyes, the barest suggestions of features but when she got home there would be a _baby_, a baby to cuddle and love. A baby who would quickly grow up to become a whole person.

She was getting a little teary. 'Oh, I am going to spoil this one so much.'

Speirs was buzzing too. He spent so much energy enforcing this stern façade, repressing all emotions that might inhibit his ability to do his job properly, and now the happiness was bursting out of him, straining at the seams. His lips twitched compulsively with all the effort it took to stop his face splitting into the broadest of grins.

'Come down to Company HQ,' he said. 'We're having a celebration. Wetting the baby's head.'

She and Ron met Nixon at the door of the Company HQ, the house where she had spent the night before last. It was the first time they had seen each other since, well… and Grace was quite sure how to act. What was expected of her? She needed him to steer this one because she was completely at sea.

He threw her a small smile. 'Hey.'

'Hello,' she replied in a quiet voice.

Ron looked between the two, saw something he didn't want to see and huffed, 'I'm going inside', before stomping off.

Nixon's eyes stayed on her and Grace found herself unable to meet his gaze. The painful thought in the forefront of her mind was that the last time he had looked at her so thoroughly and with that same intense concentration, she had been naked. She considered it safer to fix her attention on the laces of her boots which were in need of replacing.

'I… uh… Wanted to check you were okay,' he stumbled. 'When I woke up yesterday you were gone.'

'No,' she answered. 'When you woke up yesterday, you grunted "ten more minutes", rolled over and then I'm guessing slept for a couple more hours, _then_ you woke up and I was gone.'

'Oh. Sorry.' He had the decency to sound sheepish and she looked up, just to check.

'It's alright. Dick gave me a lift back.'

Nixon's eyes sharpened. 'What did he say?'

'Nothing.'

'Huh. I just expected him to… Never mind.' He shook his head. 'So, you're okay?'

'I'm great. I had a nice time.'

'Nice? I was aiming for something a little more than nice. Guess, I'll have to keep practicing.' He stepped in, slipping his hands around her neck to cup her cheeks. His hands were cold without gloves but it was easy to lean into the kiss he offered. After a while she pulled away but without much resolve.

'Careful, you don't want to upset Ron.'

'I don't think much is going to upset Speirs today.'

'Still, we should go inside. Be social.'

With a sigh he nodded in agreement and they separated.

Lewis was right; nothing was going to anger Speirs on this day. Grace had never really considered the possibility of children. She was the youngest in her family, had never nursed in paediatric wards, had never really come into contact with any children. Of course, she had always assumed that one day she would have her own, but it seemed a dim sort of inevitability. Watching Ron reacting to the news of his first born son sold the idea to her.

He wasn't loud, jumping from the rafters, that would be out of character. He was in a state of quiet shellshock, numb with joy as if he didn't quite know how to deal with his happiness. Grace didn't know what sort of father he would be but she knew her nephew couldn't ask for a better one.

Despite the fact that it was barely ten in the morning, Harry and Nixon went off to find some champagne which they found with surprising ease. Grace didn't want to know where they had pilfered it from or what act bordering on illegality they had to commit. But everyone was in general high spirits and even Dick could be prevailed upon to take a sip. The face he pulled before passing the bottle to Lieutenant Lipton was hilarious.

Lipton raised the bottle in toast. 'To… What's the boy's name, sir?'

'Robert,' said the proud father. 'My son's name is Robert.'

They all drank to that. Grace took back the photograph from him and studied the grainy image. 'He's probably the most beautiful baby I've ever seen. And he looks a bit like you, Ron. A bit around the eyes.'

Nixon snorted. 'Why do people always say that? I have never seen a new-born baby that looks like anything other than a new born baby.'

Harry slapped him good-naturedly on the back. 'Come on, Lew, you must've looked at your kid and recognised just a little part of yourself in him. Or was Nixon Junior all milkman when he came out?'

Silence fell through the room like a dead weight. It was unclear whether it had been a pre-agreed secret between all the men in the room or that Harry just sensed that he had made a mis-step but suddenly everyone was either staring at Nixon or Grace, just waiting for either of them to say something.

Grace didn't say anything. She couldn't think of anything, she just kept relaying the question over in her head probing it for any weak points where she might have misunderstood the meaning. No, there weren't any.

Nixon laughed nervously, his eyes quickly flicking to Grace and then back to the rest of the room. He was going to play this off like nothing had happened. 'He's got dark eyes like me. Started going brown before we'd even left the hospital.'

The atmosphere was choking and Grace suddenly turned and left the room. She didn't offer any explanation, just left. She was in the hall and out the door before she realised that it had been a bad move to flounce out like that. Stupid and melodramatic. Now they would all know something was up.

She considered going back in, plastering on a smile and pretending that her vision wasn't blurring with tears she was desperate to stop from falling. Instead she froze on the porch staring at a pile of slush swept into the ugly gutters, as another part of her considered just running and never seeing any of them again.

After a few moments she heard the soft thud of jump boots on the doorstep behind her. She turned, Nixon was there looking at her strangely. Hopefully he had made a better excuse to explain why he had to leave the party. He leant against the door frame and took a deep breath.

'So… I have a kid.'

Her head snapped around to look at him. 'Don't say it like it's nothing. It's like you're trying to me think it's not a big deal and I'm just getting upset over nothing.'

'You're upset?'

'Of course I'm upset! And you knew I would be or you would have said something earlier.'

He crossed the space between them, taking her hands in his. She didn't snatch them away as her instincts told her to but she still refused to look him in the eye. She might cry if she did.

'You always knew I was married,' he said softly.

'There's a difference between having a wife and having a wife _and_ a child. It's just the one, right? You don't have a whole brood waiting for you back in America?'

'Yeah, just the one,' he said. 'His name's Michael. He's two and half now but he was only a couple of months when I last saw him. Kathy used to send me pictures but she hasn't in a while now. I don't know him and he doesn't know me.'

'Is that supposed to make things better?'

'No, definitely worse,' he said sadly. 'It's a strange feeling when you realise that _Ron Speirs_ is a better father than you.'

'How can you know that? Like you said, you haven't even had a chance.'

'Speirs has spent every day for a month waiting on that letter. Did you see the way he was looking at that photo? He's in love with a kid he hasn't even met yet. Me, I barely even think about my son. It's only those letters from Kathy that remind me that I am a father at all. Sometimes I think, you know, if I just got back home and saw him again I'd remember how to do the "dad thing". Then I realise I never knew how even when I had him.'

The story made Grace's heart ache for him and her anger was cooling off in the face of sadness but still, a sad story didn't change how things were. As much as he liked to forget about his family they still existed and nothing would ever change that.

'It's horrible,' said Grace. 'And I am so, so sorry for you but it does change things.'

'How? I don't understand why anything should change.'

Grace tried to explain her feelings in a way that didn't make her seem completely irrational. 'A wife… One day you could leave her or get divorced or something. A child is forever.'

'Do you want me to leave my wife?'

'No! I don't know. I don't want to marry you.'

'Okay, 'cause I'm not on one knee.'

'I don't know what I want,' she said. 'Actually, yes, I do. I'm going to go back to the hospital and I want you to leave me alone.' She disentangled her fingers from his.

Nixon jumped back in alarm. Genuine panic registered on his face. 'What, forever? Because we don't have to…?'

'No, not forever. Just for a while. Okay?'

He nodded slowly. 'Okay. And you'll let me know when "a while" is over? Like, the very second.'

'Yes, I'll let you know.' She stood and pressed a chase kiss to his lips. He wanted to deepen it, she could tell, maybe use the kiss as a reminder as to why she should stay with him, but he didn't. 'I'll see you later, Lewis.'

**Another chapter which I hope is alright.**

**Thank you for those few people that review every chapter, I really appreciate it, expecially SparkELee who is my new favourite person. Caught-offsides I would love to hear your suggestions, and StanziWood I hope you don't think I'm being too tough on Grace and Nixon.**

**x**


	25. Chapter 25

**Apologies for the lateness of the update. This is going to become a running theme as I've finally got a real world job! Sorry, but I'll try my best.**

Chapter 25

Stupid, was what she felt mostly. Just a stupid little girl swept away by a man who should know better. Because he should know better.

Grace didn't sleep that day. She couldn't, not when there was some woman named Kathy all the way across an ocean holding a baby that looked like Lewis, a baby that had the same dark eyes. Was she waiting patiently for her husband to come home? Was she telling that baby all about his brave daddy away at war? Was she completely oblivious or did this woman know her husband well enough not to expect him to be faithful?

The more she thought about it the more that shady, unknown figure began to resemble her sister, Lillian. Lillian as she was when her first husband went away to Africa, when she grew pale and thin for missing him. As Grace swam in that hazy place that lies on the edge of utter exhaustion but won't become sleep, Kathy became Lillian, waiting patiently by the door for news, making plans for the day her husband would come back and they could resume their lives together. The thought of it made Grace feel sick, dirty, guilty. It felt like there was something crawling in her stomach.

And the worst of it was that she had been warned. If they hadn't come right out and said it like Dick had, there had been those wary glances, just little frowns saying "he's not for you". But she was Grace and she always thought she was right. They had to be wrong or jealous or uninformed. She was in love. Or at least she thought she was.

But she must have fallen asleep just for a few minutes because it was Maggie barging through the door that woke her up with a sudden electric jolt. And she must have been crying too because her eyes felt raw and welded shut, she could barely open them.

'You're going to be late,' commented Maggie, pulling off her uniform and chucking it into an untidy pile on the floor. She was right, it was dark outside. 'What's wrong with your face? You look dreadful.'

Grace crawled off the bed and stumbled towards the little mirror. Yes, she looked a fright; pink around the eyes and smudged mascara on her upper lids. She filled the basin with cold water from the jug on the dresser and preceded to wash her face. It didn't do much to improve the overall effect but it made her feel better, more together. Like she could put Lewis Nixon in a box, just for now and get on with her job. She would unpack him and all their tiring issues later when a little distance and a little time would help her to think sensibly.

'Are you alright?' asked Maggie watching as Grace hurriedly tried to make herself presentable.

She probably did genuinely want to help but Grace didn't feel like talk about it, and besides Maggie's wasn't the kind of advice she needed right now. She was the one who practiced the "out of sight out of mind" rule when it came to men's wives and the last thing Grace needed was another person trying to convince her that she was over-reacting.

'Well, I'd rather this shift was already over and done with,' she answered. 'I have to run.'

The act of working, doing what she loved was exactly what Grace needed to freeze her thoughts about Nixon. It reminded her that she had aspects of her life that were more important than him and the problems he brought her.

Lights were out at eight thirty and most of the men fell asleep quickly if not naturally. Grace moved up and down her ward like a ghost, checking charts to make sure that medicine was correctly administered, fixing saline lines dislodged by sleepy movements and generally straightening the room and its occupants to ordered perfection.

The movements she flowed through were clean and familiar, done almost subconsciously and soothing to her racing mind. This morning the news of her new-born nephew made her consider the possibility of children. It would be very easy after the war to find someone (not Nixon) get married and settle down to the role of a wife and mother. It would be equally simple to stay as she was. In a few years' time she could be a matron in a civilian hospital, reigning over her own kingdom, seeing that everything was to her satisfaction. The idea was more than a little appealing but it would never happen with a man slowing her down.

The unearthly silence of the dark ward was broken by a hacking cough. It was a sound Grace had grown familiar with over the past couple of nights on the late shift and she knew exactly where it came from.

Corporal Perez had been in the hospital for three days now after getting in the way of a grenade blast whilst on a patrol. He was an unusual case in that he had very few secondary injuries, the external ones caused by fragmentation, but his internal organs had been churned by the shock waves. When he came in he had been ignoring the symptoms of a collapsed lung and had been getting slowly worse despite emergency surgery which had saved his life.

A few of the men had complained about the sound of his breathing in the night. It wasn't that loud but in the silence of the ward the grating in and out of air pushing through a caved in chest sounded like a death rattle.

Grace walked over and checked his chest drain for any signs of infection as was required repeatedly throughout the day. 'Can't sleep, Corporal?'

He shook his head. 'Call me Tony.' His voice came out a low wheeze but was reasonably strong.

'I'm not supposed to call patients by their first names. It encourages familiarity.'

'I wouldn't mind getting familiar with you, Sister.' Grace heard lines like this about ten times a day and while sometimes it could be offensive or irritating, in cases like Corporal Perez's it was just sad. Men like him tried so hard to cling onto pieces of their identity despite having so much stripped away from them; their dignity, their independence, their own bodies. By flirting with a pretty nurse they were making a statement – I am who I was, just a twenty-one year old man with my whole life ahead of me. Whether that was true or not varied from patient to patient.

'Oh, yes?' she teased with a raised eyebrow, keeping up the pretence. 'And how are you going to do that? You don't my name.'

'What is it?'

She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. 'Grace. Shhh, don't tell anyone.'

He grinned and then fell into another violent coughing feet. It was so bad it was as if his body was rejecting the healing lung by coughing it straight out of his mouth, but there was no blood so Grace was reassured that it was nothing to serious. She helped him to a sip of water.

'When am I going to get out of here, Grace?' he asked when he had recovered.

'We can't evacuate you until you're stable. Maybe the end of the week.'

'And then I'll go back to England?' She nodded. 'Hey, maybe when we're both back in England I could take you out sometime? I know a swell dance hall in Piccadilly. That's in London.'

She smiled. 'I know. And I'm sorry but I can't.'

'Already spoken for?'

'Afraid so.' It slipped out naturally.

'I bet he doesn't treat you half as good as I would.'

'You're probably right but that's just the way things are. Will you try and get some sleep?' She could see Mary by the door trying to get her attention by waving frantically.

'If you'll kiss me goodnight.'

'Now you're pushing your luck.'

Quietly, the merest pressure of her boots on the floor, Grace scurried across the ward towards Mary. 'What is it?' she whispered furiously.

'Maggie wants to see you.' Mary's face was agitated; she was hopping from one foot to another in a move which would usually suggest she badly needed the toilet but which Grace sensed might be more than that.

'I'm on shift.' And Maggie wasn't so Grace knew that whatever had sent Mary running to her wasn't work related.

'Yes, I know. I can see that. But she really was very insistent. She made it sound as if it were terrible important.'

'Not as important as the weekend pass I'll lose if the Matron finds me off the ward.'

'She also told me that I would be happy to cover for you.' Mary looked far from happy and Grace couldn't help wondering what Maggie had used to bribe or more likely threaten her with in order to get her to agree to this.

Grace rolled her eyes. 'Alright. Where is she?'

Grace climbed the steps up to her bedroom heavily. If this was some kind practical joke or a question about how best to achieve the Lana Turner look with rollers, then she would not be pleased. She really wasn't in the mood for small things tonight.

But the closer she got to the room the more she felt that something serious was wrong. There were gasps and whispered voices which got louder and more insistent the closer she got until her hand was on the doorknob and she could make out Maggie's angry tones.

'Put your fingers down your throat.' Grace heard muted behind the door of the bedroom. 'Put your fingers down there or I'll fucking do it myself.'

A retching noise and Grace opened the door.

'What's going on?'

Ally, red, blotchy and tear-streaked was kneeling on the floor, a kidney dish resting in her lap while Maggie held back her hair in a gesture that was more vicious than caring. Ally had vomited in the dish, there were ghoulish flecks around her mouth.

Maggie looked up.

'Come in and shut the door!'

Grace did as she was told and repeated her question. 'What's going on?'

'She's torturing me!' spluttered Ally.

'Only because she just took a handful of bloody pills. How stupid do you have to be?'

Grace groaned and knelt down beside them. 'Oh, Ally! You stole some more?'

She reached out to pull her into a hug but Ally pushed her away with uncharacteristic malice. 'Why can't you two just leave me alone? You think I can go back home to my Dad knocked up? There aren't really a tonne of options!'

'Do you think this is an option?' Maggie demanded. 'You've left it too late. And I'll tell you something else, gin and a hot bath won't do it either. You're past the point for quick fixes.'

Ally fixed her sharp and malevolent eye on Grace. 'Tell her to let me go.'

But Grace was out of her element. Yesterday she had made a promise to Ally that things would be fixed, as breezily as if she were comforting her over a broken vase, spilt milk. Now that she saw Ally like this red and wild-eyed with desperation, Grace realised that her assurances had been empty. She had no solutions. She could not magically put things right. She couldn't even offer advice because really what the hell did she know?

She looked to Maggie helplessly because she seemed to have a better handle on this situation than she did. 'I think you should listen to Maggie.'

'And all Maggie is saying is that I'm screwed!'

'Well yes, that's generally how you get in situations like this,' snapped Maggie before sensing that she might have gone just that little bit too far and moderating her tone slightly. 'All I meant was that you have to options; either you go home and have the baby, or you go home and have a proper abortion. All this cowering in the supply cupboard isn't going to help you.'

'Oh, what do you even care!' snapped Ally. 'You're not my friends.'

She pulled herself up clumsily, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and stumbled out of the room. But not before Maggie grabbed her wrist tightly enough for her clenched fist to open revealing one last packet of painkillers which Maggie silently pocketed.

The room rattled as the door slammed behind Ally and Grace worried that the noise would cause people to investigate the commotion. She turned to Maggie, completely bewildered. 'How did she get more pills? I thought I took them all.'

'We work in a hospital,' said Maggie. 'It's not hard.'

'I'll talk to the Major about locking the medicine supplies or, I don't know… more frequent inventories.' She paused before asking the question she really wanted answered. 'What's going to happen to her.'

Maggie shrugged. 'I don't know. But she's left it too late to just take a pill and expect it all to go away. She's risking hurting the baby by taking those painkillers.' She looked serious. That was unsurprising, it was a serious occasion, Ally's whole future was in tatters. But she also looked sad, deeply, personally sad. 'It depends what her parents are like. Mine weren't best pleased.'

'What?' Rather than spelling it out Maggie pointedly waited for Grace to come to her own conclusions. 'Did you…? No. You don't have a baby, that's ridiculous.'

'No, I don't have a baby. I decided to go for option two.'

Several times over the course of their friendship Grace had been struck by the thought that she really knew very little about Maggie Harris. While other people shared their pain, Maggie kept hers very tightly looked up. If you looked at her in the right light or at the right hours of the day you could sometimes see a flicker of what she was feeling but it was always kept just out of reach. Grace couldn't imagine what it was like to live like that, wrapped so tightly in secrets.

'Do you wish you'd had the baby?'

'No, of course not,' Maggie said scornfully. 'What kind of mother do you think I'd make?'

'What about your… the baby's father?'

'Oh, he was decent enough. Decent as in he gave me the money for the abortion. Not decent enough to propose marriage on the spot.'

'Was he already married?'

Maggie looked at her very pointedly and Grace, as she often was around her more experienced friend, felt as if she were drowning in her inexperience. 'Married or not, there are plenty of men out there who'll treat you badly, you just have to be able to spot them.' She checked her watch, it was a quarter past midnight, the dead hour so hopefully no one had noticed that she had been gone. 'You'd better get back. I'll keep an eye on Alison.'

When Grace caught back to the ward less than half an hour later something was missing. 'What happened to Corporal Perez?' she asked Mary.

'He was having breathing trouble,' she answered. 'I called Major Phillips and he took him to resus.'

The Resuscitation Ward was the one closest to the operating theatres and where the sickest men went. Grace knew that in Normandy some of the orderlies had nicknamed it "The Morgue" because so few men ever came back from it. She had tried so hard to keep him from it and it hurt that he had needed her just at the moment when she hadn't been there.

The 101st were clearing out. The heavy wheels of the trucks laden down with men and all the accompanying paraphernalia of war, churned the grey snow into muddy mountains of sludge. They were leaving the land drained. Like vultures they had stripped the houses bare, fought over the scraps the pushed back Germans had left them and now, with no sustenance left for them to steal, they were moving on to the next empty corner of Europe.

Several trucks had passed Grace by driven by men who would have happily given her a lift is she'd thought to raise her thumb, but more than warmth and dry shoes, Grace needed the walk. The fresh February air was like a knife through her thoughts, freezing a whirl into confusion down to the simple certainty of action.

She stormed her way into E Company HQ without preamble and stomped up the stairs to Dick's room. She knocked but as an answer to didn't come within two seconds she considered herself completely justified in walking straight in.

Dick looked up from his desk as she entered. He looked surprised to see her but stood and smiled all the same.

'Grace, how are you doing? You know, Lew isn't here at the moment…'

'I don't want to talk to him, I want to talk to you.'

'Okay,' he said slowly sitting back down. 'Do you want to sit down?' He gestured vaguely at the footstool in front of his desk.

'No. I wanted to congratulate you on your promotion. Well done _Major_.'

He frowned because even he could tell that it wasn't congratulations she was offering. 'Um… Thank you.'

'But as Major can you exercise just a little bit of control of your men's behaviour?' She continued her voice was getting louder.

'Is this about Nixon?'

Grace could have screamed in frustration. 'Not everything is about him! I'm talking about the way your men are allowed to sidle up to my girls, flatter them, make promises and then destroy their lives like it's nothing.' She was definitely shouting now but there was very little she could do to stop herself.

'Sounds like we're talking about Nixon.' His mouth was twitching at the corners like this was a joke. Like her anger and Ally's pain was something to laugh over.

'There's a boy in one of your Companies, F Company I think. He seduced one of my nurses now she's pregnant. He's responsible for this but he intends to do nothing about it.'

Dick's smile faltered before it was even properly born. 'I'm very sorry to hear that but I don't know what you expect me to do about it.'

'Her whole life is going to be ruined, doesn't that mean anything?'

'Grace, sit down.' When she looked to refuse again he stood and literally steered her to the seat and pushed her down. She was shaking with the injustice of it all. 'Now, there are a lot of things I can order my men to do but I can't morally order them to marry people they don't want to.'

'It doesn't sound very moral,' Grace argued but her voice was quiet. By sitting her down he had somehow drained the anger out of her, not completely but the most violent of her tendencies were gone. She knew she was being unreasonable and unrealistic, knew he could do nothing to fix the situation but the just hurt all the more.

'I know. Just the way things are. Can I get you a cup of coffee?'

'No, thank you. I should be going and you have packing to do. Have a good trip back to Mourmelon. Do make sure to write.'

'Wait, Grace.' She turned back to face him when all she really wanted to do was crawl home and to bed. 'About Lewis…'

'I told you, we're not talking about him.'

'It's just…' he shifted awkwardly in his seat. 'You know I don't want to get involved, but there's something you should know about his wife. I've met her, Kathy and it's not how you think.'

'They're _not_ married with a child together?'

'No but if were to get divorced it wouldn't be your fault. They were never going to last. She doesn't love him and she's not the type to sit at home waiting patiently, if you know what I mean.'

Grace didn't know what to say to that. He had concisely cut through her own thoughts and was she right in thinking he was _condoning _the relationship?

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. 'I thought you were supposed to be warning me off.'

He shrugged awkwardly. 'I guess I'm changing my position. He really does care about you.'

She was tempted to ask whether Nixon had coerced his best friend into speaking on his behalf but thought it might ruin the moment. Instead she nodded and said, 'Thank you.' And left the room.

Dizziness struck her at the top of the stairs and she clutched onto the banister for support. She had a bastard of a headache pounding behind the eyes and all she wanted to do was sleep for a day or two.

'You know if you want to yell at someone I'm right here.'

Her eyes flung open and she saw that he was. Nixon, the person that she really wanted to be screaming at was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, dark eyes all big and round like a kicked puppy. He had lost the beard since yesterday reverting back to his usual state of mildly unkempt rather than plain out scruffy as he had been since Bastogne. Grace tried to fold her headache away and fix him with a piercing gaze she really didn't have the energy to maintain.

'You heard that?'

'I think they probably heard that across the river. I'm surprised they're not flinging an .88 this way.'

'Yeah, well, I've just had conclusive proof that all men are bastards.'

'Dick isn't.'

Grace felt guilty because he was right. Dick Winters was the decent one, the one who'd always pick you up on time and never cheat and never lie, he'd probably never given any woman reason to yell at him in his life. She deflated even further, today was a day when she was feeling the life sucking out of her. 'I should apologise to him.'

'Do that later. I was just heading up to the hospital to come and see you but then I heard you up there laying into Dick. I know you said you didn't think we should see each other anymore, but we're leaving today and I couldn't without talking to you.'

She waited expectantly but he said nothing.

'Go on. Permission to speak, soldier.'

'I'm sorry.'

Again she waited but that seemed all that was to be forthcoming. 'Wow, I've had more perfusive apologies from people who have knocked into me on the Tube. Do you even know what you're sorry for?'

'Oh, tonnes of stuff. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about my family. I'm sorry that I married and that makes things difficult for you. I'm sorry that we didn't meet five years in a bar somewhere or on the street and that I didn't get the chance to ask you out properly, dinner and a movie and a kiss goodnight, like Private Webster did.'

She pressed her lips together in mock disapproval. 'That's not helping your case.'

'You're right. Sorry, your honour.' He took a deep breath before continuing. He was nervous actually nervous, it was clear in the way his Adam's apple was bobbing erratically and in the tap of his fingers against the top of his thigh. She was making him nervous and that gave her power. 'I was thinking of pulling the trump card.'

'What's that?'

'You know, the "L" word. But I decided against it. I need to save it for a time when we're happy and you're not pissed at me. I'm kind of beginning to wonder whether that's ever going to happen.'

He didn't know that she had already heard it. Those whispered words that she wasn't supposed to hear had weaved themselves into a safety net. She knew how he felt but she was still holding onto her trump card, nurturing it close to her chest for when the time was right.

She paused for a moment long enough to cause him to sweat properly. Eventually she nodded as she knew she always would even if he didn't. 'Alright. Save it. But don't be so sure I'm going to say it back.'

'What does that mean?'

'It means I'm going to miss you so you'd better write.'

'Uh… I don't know,' he teased. 'I'm not that great at letter writing, my wife could tell you that.' She pulled a face that told him exactly what she thought of his jokes. He quickly amended. 'I will write you every day. Or at least every week. Now how about I drive you back up and we can say a proper goodbye?'

Grace woke up curled into the passenger door of the jeep, head rested uncomfortably on her arm. It was the sudden pressure of the brakes as they had pulled up outside of the hospital which had woken her and for a moment she was disorientated. She must have fallen asleep the minute they had started driving.

'Did I fall asleep?' she asked blurrily as she wrenched herself into consciousness.

Nixon smiled fondly down at her. 'No, just rested your eyes for a minute.' His eyes darkened in concern as he took in the whole of her; the pale, almost paper-white skin, the tired bruised eyes. 'You look terrible.'

'Oh, thanks.'

'I'm serious. You been getting any sleep?'

It was true she had had no more than a couple of hours in the last few days which technically was no less than the scraps she had been surviving on during the very darkest moments of the Normandy invasion or the hell of Bastogne. But her exhaustion in Haguenau was different, deeper somehow, emotional. It wasn't just physical tiredness it was being constantly being raised up and then brought down by the people around her. It wasn't just Nixon, he wasn't entirely to blame, it was as if everyone around her was laying their problems on her… or she was taking them on. Would she never learn?

She shrugged off his concern. 'Enough. I'm fine. Some things have been keeping me up.'

'Me?'

That necessitated a roll of the eyes. 'Don't flatter yourself.'

'Well, that's me told. Do you want me to walk you in?'

'No, no. It's really best if I don't flaunt you.' The idea of kissing her boyfriend goodbye on the steps of the hospital in front of the Major's disapproval was so ridiculous it was almost worth doing, but her sensible side said no. 'Say goodbye now.'

Dutifully he leant across the gear box and tangled her lips into a lingering kiss. They were both painfully aware that they probably weren't going to see each other for a while and Grace was struck by the realisation that it wasn't just flirtatious banter, she was going to miss him and all his drama and all the grief he laid upon her. She just hoped she wasn't going to become one of those girls who took to sighing a lot and staring out windows.

He pulled back reluctantly. 'Okay, goodbye. I will write.'

'Not if it's too much bother,' she joked, getting out of the car.

'And try and get some rest!' he called after her.

And she suspected with him gone she probably would.

**Review if you can x**


	26. Chapter 26

**A/N: After another crazy long hiatus I doubt anyone's actually going to read this story but after all the work I've put into this I feel I need to get this done. **

**So here you go. I'm all but done, just editing as I go so hopefully there won't be anymore insanely long breaks.**

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and favourited the story. You're stars x**

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sturzelberg, Germany

March, 1945

_Dear Grace,_

_56 days since we last saw each other and it'll probably be more by the time this letter gets to you. Missing you like crazy and can't wait until the next time I see you though I don't know when that'll be. There are rumours that will be moving out of Mourmelon soon but it probably won't come to anything. How's Germany? I can't believe after all of this you girls got there first. We've got a whole bunch of new replacements, eighteen year olds just off the troop ship from. They're all shooting their mouths off about what they're going to do when we jump on Berlin. What they don't know is that this war is coming to an end and if history has taught us anything it's that wars generally end very quietly. When both sides have got tired of all the death and are starting looking for excuses to bring the thing to a quick finish. I'm looking forward to the quiet. I don't know how I feel about the finish._

_Hope to catch up with you soon._

_Yours, Lewis_

Grace folded the letter carefully. She had waited over a week for it and the words were so precious that she had barely made it out of the Post Office before tearing through the envelope and devouring the short note.

The letter was dated in early March but they were now creeping into April. It had been four weeks since they had moved on from Alsace and six since Grace had seen Lewis Nixon. Since then a lot had happened. Ally, with much prompting from Grace had come clean about her pregnancy to the American Red Cross and within hours had been sent home in disgrace without even being given the opportunity to say goodbye. Soon after that, the hospital had been packed up once more and moved a few miles down the line into Germany itself, a true sign that the war was ending, though Grace's feelings about this latest development were just as complicated as Lewis'. He had that nasty habit of complicating simple things even when he wasn't around.

As promised he had written but the wartime postal service being what it was, the receipt of those letters had been sporadic at best and she had found herself responding to letters in the wrong order or long after they were written. It was hardly a meaningful form of communication and while they did touch on his true feelings it was no substitute for the face to face contact she desperately missed.

She couldn't say that she stopped by the Post Office everyday to ask after letters, she had more self-respect than that but every other day Grace would make the time to pop around to make casual enquiries. Maggie had been generous enough to accompany her on this trip but she was now getting bored and fidgety.

'Can you not save that for later?' Maggie whined. 'Are you so hungry for his words of affection that you just can't wait until we get back?' She flicked her cigarette butt on the pristine German pavement. The cleanliness of the place affronted her apparently. 'What does he write anyway? Does he tell you all the things he's going to do to you once he sees you again?'

'Yes. It's all very risqué. I'm blushing right now.' Grace folded the letter into her pocket, without finishing it.

'Liar. If it was anything sexy you would have shown me.'

They walked a little further down the quaint little cobbled streets lined with equally quaint businesses; a butchers, an ironmongers, a shop selling antique furniture and other oddities. It was like a brighter, cleaner German version of a pre-war Aldbourne.

'Does he say anything about when they're going to get to Germany?' Maggie continued.

'Soon, he says vaguely. I'm just waiting for something to break up the monotony of treating in growing toenails.'

'Careful. They might hear you complaining and send us to Japan and then where would you and Captain Nixon be?'

Grace shrugged. 'Probably no worse off than we are now.'

A loud crash like something heavy being hurled across the street by an elephant caused both Maggie and Grace to both whip around in the direction of the sound. It came from around the sharp corner of a small street they were passing, an unexpected sound in the quaint quiet of the little town.

Grace turned to Maggie. 'Do you want to go take a look?'

She shrugged. 'Alright.'

The street was full of khaki. The Americans were in town and making their presence felt in typical fashion. They swarmed like nats, burrowing inroads into the townhouses that lined the street and without care or sensitivity or even much more than five minutes warning before casting out the unsuspecting German occupants. It was happening all over the town and in many other towns in Germany. Grace never usually felt much sympathy for the ousted Germans, they after all would eventually have their homes returned to them in a shabby state but still standing none the less, unlike so many in Europe. However, what made Grace and Maggie stop was the cause of the sound that had drawn them there. A solid looking armoire was wreckage on the cobbled paving. It had been thrown from at least the first storey, out of one of the large French windows. It had knocked down potted plants decorating the window sills on its descent and the remains of these were strewn over the street too, trampled beneath the heavy jump boots of paratroopers.

In the middle of it all was an old woman, her grey eyes clouded by cataracts, clawing what she could from the broken furniture. The cupboard had been storing old photographs and papers and she collected these in her pooled apron to save them from going the way of the potted ferns. The men around paid her no attention and she appeared like an actress centre stage, struggling on with a performance her audience were ignoring.

Grace didn't recognise any of the soldiers around as while they wore the Screaming Eagle badge of the 101st Airborne, they also wore the freshly scrubbed youthful look of boys just off the troop ship. But in amongst all the exuberance of the young boys was one figure set apart; David Webster louchely watching the scene with his reporter's eye.

Without thinking, Grace jumped forward and grabbed him by the shoulder pulling him back. 'What the hell are you doing?'

Webster gaped at her speechless. Obviously he hadn't expected to see her and the fact that she was here and standing in front of him without so much as a "hello" threw him for a loop.

'He's doing his damn job is what he's doing,' said a voice behind her. It was Joe Liebgott pushing through the platoon of replacements. 'Hey, Grace. Maggie. What are you all fired up about today?'

Maggie answered before Grace could. 'I don't know, maybe it's the rampant vandalism your men are indulging in.'

'We're the invading force, isn't that what we're supposed to do?' said Joe carelessly though he did cast a careful eye to the old woman scrabbling on the floor.

'Well, you're all looking distastefully comfortable with the pillage and plunder role.' Maggie's criticism dripped with disdain. 'And what about those boys in there? Have they even seen any action, or is this what they think war is? Smashing up an old woman's home?'

'Hey, Web asked this woman to leave. He asked her real nice. You think the krauts were that polite with the French?'

'I agree,' said David. 'Have you seen this place? It's like a fucking fairy tale town. You can't even tell there's been a war. A broken dresser doesn't really compare with all the shit they rained down on London.'

In principal Grace could see his and Liebgott's point. In actuality she was finding it very difficult to reconcile the people who had ground cities like London, Coventry and Newcastle almost to dust, the people who had shot down her brother's plane, with this very harmless, ordinary looking woman. They weren't the same.

'Oh, yes? But what has that got to do with this?' She gestured to the old woman now scrambling in the street to rescue her old photographs from the callous feet of the paratroopers.

'Ask them if she's got anywhere to go,' Maggie instructed Liebgott.

Joe looked as if he were about to refuse, but the woman let out a muffled sob before them. With surprising gentleness, Liebgott stepped forward and knelt before the woman. She flinched from him as he put a hand on her shoulder but calmed as he spoke to her slowly and careful. The others watched his brief conversation with her before he turned back and translated. 'Her sister lives on the other side of town. Here, Web, help me collect up this stuff.'

They picked up the woman's few meagre possessions, the patched suitcase she managed to throw together in the unsympathetic five minutes the soldiers had given her and escorted her across the town.

As their pace was set by the old woman who, now cheered by their assistance was babbling away to Liebgott in a German dialect so fast even Webster was having difficulty keeping up. Surprisingly, Liebgott listened patiently. He was good with old people and the way that he offered the woman his arm to lean on as they approach a steep incline in the road was both unexpected and strangely heart-warming. After all the burning rage he had been harbouring since Bastogne, this brief reappearance of pre-war Joseph Liebgott, the one who was kind and funny and respectful, was a welcome sight.

'She likes his accent,' said Webster, who had fallen into step with Grace. 'It reminds her of home.'

'His accent?'

'Apparently he sounds like an Austrian.'

'And what do you sound like?'

'An uneducated American.'

Grace linked her arm companionably through his. 'Oh, David, you're anything but that.'

They were flirting again but with David Webster it always came too naturally to feel guilty about.

The group were met outside a nice farm house a little way off from the town by an old man digging in the charmingly utilitarian front garden – the woman's brother-in-law, David explained to Grace, translating the woman's wild gestures and the man's curious glances. Clearly he didn't speak English either but after some explanation about what had happened he invited the four young people into his home and allowed them to finally set down the old woman's belongings in the doorway.

Grace hardly knew what was happening before Joe had accepted an invitation to stay to lunch on their behalf and they were ushered into the dining room with a lot of wide smiles and nods of encouragement.

They were introduced to the woman's sister, a plump, smiling old thing like an illustration of Red Riding Hood's grandmother come to life and on the snow white linen table cloth she set before them a tray piled high with food. Thick slices of white bread, cucumber, tomato, rustic hews of ham and salami, and in the centre of it all a silver salver of lush red strawberries.

Their eyes lit up. Not a single one of them had seen this much food on one tray in a very long time, especially the girls. After five years of rationing, Grace at least had thought she had forgotten what real butter tasted like or white bread.

'Jesus,' exclaimed Joe. 'The last time we had it this good, we were thrown out of a plane the next day.'

'And strawberries,' Maggie breathed in awe.

The brother-in-law spoke at some length before pushing the bowl of strawberries at Maggie. Joe translated, 'He grows them in the back yard. They shouldn't be in season until summer but this year he's got a bush which ripened early.'

Maggie took one with a muttered, _'Danke shoen_' and ate it as daintily as she could, though a small line of red juice slid down the corner of her mouth. The old couple looked inordinately pleased and Grace followed suit.

By the time they managed to extricate themselves from the elderly triumvate's grasp they were better fed than they had been in a long while.

'If that's what Germany's like I think I'm gonna like it here,' said Joe. He was grinning from ear to ear as they began their walk back into the centre of town.

'Yeah.' David was looking thoughtful. Grace could almost see the sentences forming in his head ready to be jotted down on paper in the next spare moment.

'What?' asked Maggie. 'Were you expecting the place to be full of dead-eyed SS psychopaths? It's not like that here. It's just a town.'

'It seems anticlimactic is all,' said David. 'And pointless.'

A morbid, philosophical conversation was looming so Grace decided to change the subject. 'So, you all get to pick and choose the houses you live in now.'

'Speirs does,' answered Joe. 'But not until he's gone over the place first and taken all the good loot for himself.'

'Officers,' snorted David contemptuously.

'And where are the officers billeted?' She tried to make the question sound casual but she must have let some eagerness on because Joe chuckled dirtily.

'And what might you be lookin' for there?' he said. 'Or should that be who? I forgot you had a think for officers.'

'Like all the girls,' agreed David.

Grace flushed burning hot but she was determined to try and retain some dignity.

Maggie had other plans. 'Oh no,' she laughed. 'I can't think of anyone there she might be desperate to see. No one at all.'

'Give it a rest, please,' Grace snapped.

Interruption thankfully came in the form of Captain Speirs rounding the corner. The boys snapped to attention as he strode over.

'Liebgott,' he called without so much of an indication that he had seen Grace let alone a greeting. 'I thought I told you to oversee the clearing of those houses. You too, Webster. How they supposed to do that with two translators gone AWOL?'

'Yes, sir,' they muttered in military unison before scarpering off. Speirs still knew how to put the fear of God in his men.

He turned his cold eye on Maggie who didn't flinch. 'And don't you have somewhere to be as well?'

'Aren't you the charmer?' she said. 'You could've just said you wanted her to yourself. No need to be rude.'

Grace gave her friend and apologetic look before she too left Grace alone with her brother-in-law. 'She was right. You could at least try to act like a normal human being.'

He grinned wolfishly. 'I could try but where's the fun in that?'

'How were Lillian and the baby?' Grace knew that Ron had had a two week furlough to England where he had spent precious time getting acquainted with his new-born son.

A ghost of a smile fluttered across his face. 'Good. They're well.'

'You are not just going to leave it at that,' Grace pressed. 'This is my first born nephew we're talking about, I need details. What does he look like?'

'A baby.' He said it as if the answer were obvious. 'About 25 inches long. He's got hair now. It's blonde. We call him Robert, not Robbie in case…'

'To avoid confusion?'

'Lillian thought you might mind, about the name.'

'He was her brother too,' Grace insisted with genuine feeling. 'I thought it was a lovely idea.'

Ron nodded. 'Good.'

They lapsed into an awkward silence. Maybe they had veered to close to talking about things which required actual emotional input.

'Have you seen Nixon yet?'

'Not yet,' she answered.

'He was pining over you,' Ron said eventually, still uncomfortable. 'Nixon. He was… you know…'

'Pining?' The choice of word amused her; it wasn't one she associated with either Speirs or Nixon. 'If you mean sitting around and drinking whisky all day that's not pining, that's his natural state.'

Ron shrugged off the sarcasm and persevered with something he clearly wanted to say no matter how uncomfortable it made him. 'Things are pretty serious there, right?'

'Ron, you're sounding like a sixteen year old girl.'

His ill-ease was clear. In fact the way he was talking sounded like someone else's voice coming out of his lips, and Grace was pretty sure she knew who that someone else was. 'Did you tell Lillian about… what's been going on?'

'I had to. We're married.'

'Ron! You know you are now my least favourite brother-in-law.'

'On last check I'm your only brother-in-law. And I don't give a damn who you're sleeping with but you didn't tell Lillian and that upset her.'

'Then she can bloody well write and tell me that herself rather than sending her messenger boy. That you can tell her.'

'I can't,' he replied. 'We're married. I can't say anything that might upset her.'

'Oh, is that how marriage works,' she said, before smiling an apology at him. She'd enjoyed her hour spent with the German family and that on top of the imminent reunion with Nixon couldn't be so easily soured. 'I'll write to Lily, alright?

'You want to see him, don't you?'

'Yes, please.'

On Ron's recommendation, Grace raced to the building which had until recently been the mayor's home. There was no one there she knew and she felt a pang of disappointment as her imagined reunion with Nixon hit its first stumbling block.

On her way out she ran head first into Dick. Their difference in heights meant she caught him right in the midriff, winding him more than slightly.

'Sorry!' she exclaimed.

He waved away her apology like the gentleman he was. 'No damage. Looking for Lew?' she nodded. 'You could try Regiment. Though it's a long shot as it's exactly where he'd supposed to be. Or the Officer's mess.'

He pointed her in the right direction but she found no luck there only Colonel Sink bellowing at an orderley about mislaid whiskey rations. She tried the Post Office which was currently in the process of being requisitioned, and the shops lining the town square, but still no sign of the elusive man.

Dashing across the street she heard a high pitched wolf-whistle. It came from three teenage boys in shiny new uniforms, lounging by the War Memorial smoking and watching her frantic progress. They probably felt very grown up, the invading force in a small, scared town and that had given them confidence.

She stopped in the middle of the street. What was she doing? Running around town like this wasn't dignified. And after a man who didn't have the decency to stay still for five minutes. When she did eventually find him she would look a state. Already she could feel her hair teasing free of the hairspray, her cheeks were probably flushed and her heart rate was up. When she did finally see Nixon after these painful six weeks apart she wanted to look cool, calm and gorgeous. So that he would know that he missed her too.

Grace decided the best plan was to go back the nurse's billet, brush her hair, dig out her lipstick and wait for him to come to her.

After telling the boys in no uncertain terms what she thought of their cat calls, Grace headed back defeated and deflated.

Of course, he was already there. Grace saw him before he saw her. Nixon was sitting on the doorstep his head in his hands. A wash of affection swept over her. She really had missed him.

Her shadow fell over him and he looked up. Smiled. 'Hi.'

'What are you doing here?' she said. 'I've been looking all over for you.'

'You really think I'd be doing anything else but coming to see you?'

Grace could feel her grin. Her first instinct was to throw herself at him, pull him close and sight, but a small seed of uncertainty held her back.

Luckily, Nixon had no uncertainty. He stood, covered the space between them without hesitation and his arms sliding around her waist were strong. She had been missed, that much was clear and that knowledge burnt out any nervousness. Her own arms snaked up around his neck and she pushed herself up onto tiptoes to better nestle into the warmth of his shoulder.

When they pulled away, he was smiling.

'So, you missed me then?'

'Not really.'

'Barely noticed I was gone, huh?'

'Shut up, Lewis.'

She leant up and kissed him.


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N: Just finished watching **_**The Pacific**_** after years of meaning to get around to it and while it was too uneven to be as good as BOB I did really enjoy it and it made me want to get back writing about my favourite BOB characters. **

**Anyway, here's the next instalment…**

**Disclaimer: Got to remember to keep doing these. I disclaim that this is not done for profit with characters who don't belong to me and is no reflection on the real men that inspired **_**Band of Brothers**_**.**

Chapter 27

Nixon's hands scraped up the insides of her thighs, his calloused fingers catching on her stockings. Things were getting dangerous now. A quick kiss and a fumble in the supply cupboard was turning into something much more heated than intended. Grace tried to trace back the events that had led them into their current position to find a place where blame could be lain on either one of them. He _had_ been the one to follow her into the store cupboard but then again she had been perfectly aware of what she was doing when she had cast a flirtatious glance over her shoulder.

Since he had got back from France everything had been hungrier. Every short encounter had ended in sex or would have if she hadn't stopped him. There was a desperation to the time they spent together. Sometimes when he stared at her it was so heavy is was like he was absorbing her.

Grace placed two hands on his chest and pushed him back slightly. There was now just enough space between them to fit words in.

'It's my day off tomorrow.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'Yeah. I was thinking we could do something together.' A wry look from him made her re-think her words with a blush. 'Not that something. Though maybe after. I meant we could… go out.'

'I'd love to honey but I can't. I just found out I'm going to be out of town for the next couple of days,' he said casually.

'You say "out of town" like you're going to Birmingham on business. Jumping on Berlin are you?'

'Not quite so dramatic. I'm just spending some time with the 17th Airborne; we're jumping on something somewhere. I can't say because apparently careless talk costs lives. It's not a big deal.'

'The fact that you said it wasn't a big deal makes it a big deal.'

'Don't worry. It's really nothing.' He was looking down, avoiding her eye, a clear indication that if he wasn't lying he at least wasn't telling the full truth. 'We've both been in far more dangerous situations before.'

'Alright,' she said as brightly as possible. 'We'll plan something for when you get back. Just don't do anything stupid between now and then.'

'You think I'm the type to get reckless with my life now I'm on the homestretch? I've had a pretty cushy war, never even had to fire my rifle. I don't intend to start making life difficult for myself now.'

He leaned in to kiss her again but before their lips met, the cupboard door flew open, a slice of light from the room beyond pushing them apart.

'Oh, _please_,' Maggie said, her hands on her hips. 'Don't insult my intelligence by pretending you were doing anything but what you were doing.' Grace opened her mouth to protest but Maggie raised her hand. 'Uh, uh, uh. I don't care. I just came to warn you that the Matron's on the way round and she won't care whether you're on a break or not, so put the good Captain down and pretend to be busy.'

Nixon smiled. 'Thank you, Maggie. I guess that's my cue to leave.'

He squeezed Grace's hand slightly by way of a goodbye and slid past Maggie.

'What is going on?' she said. 'Have you and I had some kind of personality switch? What happened to good girl Grace?'

Grace grabbed a handful of bed sheets as a prop to convince Matron of her busyness and avoided Maggie's eye. 'I'm still good.'

'I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just weird. I suppose I must be jealous.'

She followed Grace onto the ward where they had only a handful of patients; a broken arm, pneumonia, a couple of Americans who had managed to flip their jeep on a dark road. Their only patient of any interest or importance was a French man suffering from severe malnutrition which had since developed into slow and painful organ failure. He had been found wandering on the side of the road a few miles outside of town and brought to the hospital. They knew his name was Renaud, whether that was a first or a second name, but nothing else. The higher ups said he had probably escaped from a POW camp or a prison but apart from that he was a mystery.

The French military in the region had been contacted and in due course a Major Michaud had been sent to them. Every day he came and sat by Renaud, read to him in French or just talked just so the man would not die without a countryman.

Right now Major Michaud was eyeing Maggie up rather obviously. 'You don't need to be jealous; you're getting plenty of attention.'

Maggie rolled her eyes. 'I know. He asked me out.'

'So the thing with George Luz is off?'

'Off? It was never on. To be honest I'm tired of Americans. Do you think I should go out with him?'

'Why are you asking me? You've never asked me for advice about men before.'

'This is precisely what I mean! We've switched. And I don't like it.'

Maggie was right about one thing; Grace was acting differently. Before Nixon she used to be a dedicated nurse and while not exactly focused she would never have considered being the kind of girl to be caught in the store cupboard with a GI.

As a form of penance, the next day, she gave up her day off and spent it in the same store cupboard though this time doing a little organisation. While she had been spending time with Nixon she couldn't help but notice the place needed some tidying up.

Grace had always be the kind of person who, in order to tidy first need to make a mess. She untangled bandages to re-fold them, rearrange boxes and pulled down sheets until she was an island amidst her sea of organised chaos.

She was so absorbed in her task that it took her a little while to notice that Dick was standing in the doorway of the cupboard watching her with a strange frown.

Looking up with a smile, she said. 'This may look dreadful now but believe me, when I'm finished you'll never have seen a cupboard look so tidy.'

He didn't say anything and that strange frown stayed on etched on his face.

'What?'

'Lew said he was going on a jump today?' he said finally as he knelt beside her and Grace nodded. 'His plane went down just before the jump zone.'

She froze. 'What?' she eventually managed to splutter past the barrier of a brain which had completely stopped functioning.

'Oh, Lewis got out. He's back. He's fine,' Dick amended rather sheepishly. 'I probably should have led with that.'

'Probably.' Her voice came out thin and breathless but the world was slowly shifting back into focus. She was only just realising how fast her heart had been beating which was strange when it had seemed for that moment that everything had stopped.

'Sorry,' he continued. 'I didn't me to scare you.'

'It's alright. If he's back I'll go round and see him later.'

'Sooner rather than later. That's what I came over to talk to you about.'

'What's going on, Dick?'

'I think he's at that breaking point. You see it at lot in the field when a man's taken just about as much as he can take. I saw it with Buck and Liebgott and even the Doc. You know, a far off look when they're staring at nothing a thousand miles away. It gets men killed, especially when it's an officer who's falling apart.'

Grace did know what she was talking about. She had recognised the signs in herself and in the nurses around her. That desperate tiredness when you could lose minutes at a time just staring at the floor. She had recognised the signs in Nixon. He was the most laid-back man she had ever met, any more and he would be dead. Generally the casual, almost blasé ease with which he took situations in his stride was kind of charming but now he was seized with an apathy which was very different from the slightly endearing laziness which had come before.

'What do you want me to do about it?' Grace said a little too abruptly but she was tired with the idea that Nixon's problems where somehow her responsibility.

'Get him to lay off the drink for one thing. That's what's getting him kicked out of regiment.'

This struck a chord with her. She had only seen Nixon yesterday and he hadn't mentioned the fact that he had been demoted. What was it he had said in Dover? That drinking was an "old problem". That might be true but there was no denying he was getting worse, putting aside the Vat 69 where he had to and drinking whatever he could get his hands on now. But still, was it her place to call him out on it? She didn't want to push them headlong into another fight when they'd only just surfaced from their last.

She nodded. 'I'll come by later.' She indicated the mess around her. 'I've got this to sort out.'

'Thank you,' said Dick with real gratitude and Grace was struck not for the first time with what a truly good friend he was to Nixon. And why she didn't quite understand. As far as was visible they had nothing in common. For all the time and worry he spent on his friend all he seemed to get in exchange was Nixon's companionship.

He stood but Grace stopped him. 'Dick, do you ever feel like you're breaking?'

He looked thoughtful. 'Not so far.'

The promised "later" ate away into three whole hours and evening was falling before Grace had a breath of time to check in on Nixon. The front door of the Mayor's house was unlocked and she tentatively pushed it open.

'Hello?' she called into the suffocating darkness of the house. 'Anyone home?'

'Well, as home would be a little Irish pub on the corner of Market Street, Wilkes-Barre, I'd have to say no.'

Grace leaned into the dining room where Harry was lounging alone, unlaced boots propped irreverently on the large round table whose grandeur would have put King Arthur to shame.

He waved a tumbler of whisky at her. 'Good evening, Gracie.'

'Hi,' she said. 'Anyone else in?

'Yeah, the Prince of Darkness is locked in his chambers.'

'Prince of Darkness?'

'Your boyfriend.'

'Ah. That bad?'

He giggled drunkenly. Everything about him was a little lopsided tonight. 'You see that storm cloud circling the house? All Nix, babydoll.'

'Sorry.' She didn't know why she was apologising but it seemed expected.

'Hey, maybe a quick conjugal visit will cheer him up. Hell knows I could use one.'

It was the whisky that was making him talk like that and Grace was suddenly seized with the urge to sweep through the whole house, confiscating anything remotely alcoholic. But she pushed it down. The last thing she wanted was to appear unreasonable or worse, hypocritical.

'Why are you drowning your sorrows?' she asked him as evenly as possible.

'How do you know I'm not celebrating?'

'It's never celebrating when you're drinking alone.' She shook her head to refuse the bottle he was offering.

'I got a letter from Kitty. Wedding plans. Guess I'm just feeling a little homesick.'

He looked so forlorn that she couldn't help but walk around the table and drop a kiss on his forehead. 'Don't be a maudlin drunk, Harry.'

Leaving Harry, it was necessary to brace herself against Nixon's bedroom door to prepare herself for another wave of self- pity. She knocked and entered when she got a grunt in response.

He was lying fully clothed on the bed. Billie Holiday was warbling mournfully on the wireless and the distinctive bottle of his special brand of whisky lay within arm's reach.

She was barely spared a glance as she entered but he mumbled, 'Hi, honey.'

The endearment grated when he could barely summon the energy to turn and look at her. She smothered her irritation and perched beside him on the bed and kissed him, though his response to that was minimal too. He didn't raise his hand to cup her face like he usually did, didn't make any move to touch her.

'Did Dick tell you what happened?' he said.

'Some.'

'It's been a pretty rough day.'

'Shift over then.' She gave him a little shove and he made some room beside him on the bed. Curled against him she began to feel a little more present in his sphere of awareness and after a few quiet moments he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her body closer.

'So did you get the sack?' Grace asked quietly, against his chest.

'You can't get sacked from the army. I got demoted.'

'Do you mind?'

'No. Do you?'

'Why would I? It's not a real, is it? When the war's over it's not going to matter.'

That was the right answer and he hugged her closer and kissed her hair. 'You try telling Dick that.'

Inconveniently, she was lying between him and the whiskey bottle and he actually reached over her to get it. It riled after all the sweetness and she snatched it from his grasp if not violently then at least firmly.

'Grace, what the hell?!'

She wriggled out of his grasp, off the bed and set the bottle on the window sill on the other side of the room. 'I just don't think that this is going to help right now.'

'Huh. It bothers you too.'

'No, your drinking doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the way you act when you've been drinking.'

'Christ, you sound just like my wife.'

That punched the air out of her lungs. He was obviously drunker than she thought if he'd let that remark slip out but the fact that he was drunk didn't stop his attitude from hurting. 'Look, if you want me to storm out then you're going the right way about it.'

She made for the door before the tears that were prickling the corners of her eyes became actually tears, but as she passed by he clumsily grabbed her wrist.

'No, I don't want you to leave, Grace. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

It only took her a moment to relent. She could feel herself softening. 'You're more trouble than you're worth sometimes, you know that? Besides, I was going to storm out anyway. I'm only on a ten minute tea break.'

Sensing that she was at least halfway to forgiving him (why did she have to be so bloody predictable?), he dropped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him. When he looked up at her he had that same stupid boyish face that had gotten her into trouble in Dover and Haguenau and would probably continue getting her into trouble until she lost the will to live.

'So, I'll come and see you tonight,' he said as his fingers traced patterns around her lower back.

'And you'll be sober?'

'As a nun.'

'And I bet you know some nuns.' She kissed him soundly before twisting herself out of his arms. 'I'll be done around nine. You should have a nap until then, sleep it off.'

The hospital was quiet that evening so she had time to think. Was this what love was? Seeing a person at their lowest, with all their flaws laid out oxidising beneath open scrutiny, seeing how they could hurt you and manipulate you, yet still feel there was no one else in the world you wanted to be with? Was that love or masochism? The more Grace thought about it, the more she thought that they were probably the same thing. If only she was a little more experienced in these matters.

The clock struck nine and he hadn't arrived even though she had expected him to appear a few minutes before her shift ended as he usual did. He still wasn't there fifteen minutes later when she had tied up all the loose ends of the day; signing off late evacuation orders and inspecting beds. With a sigh of resignation, she collected her things and started walking back to her billet alone.

'Hey, Grace!' The town square was empty so she heard the person running up behind her. It wasn't Nixon. It was David Webster. Not a disappointment by any stretch of the imagination but still her heart sunk just slightly.

'Hello, David,' she said with a smile so wide it surely suggested she was compensating. 'What are you doing lurking about in the dark?'

'Just taking a walk, clearing my head. And now I guess I'm walking you home.'

Grace took his gallantly outstretched arm without complaint. He wasn't her first choice but he would do.

'I would have thought Captain Nixon would be doing the honours.'

She turned an appraising eye on David whose innocence shone through the darkness. 'Do you have something to say, Private Webster?'

'Me? No. Nothing at all.'

'If you must know, I think we're in the middle of a fight. Or about to be. I don't know.'

The sigh that escaped her was heavier than she expected and David, the perceptive bastard, caught it. 'Things getting complicated?'

'What do you mean by that?'

'Just I know guys like Nixon come with… complications.'

Grace could have laughed at the bitter truth of that. Complications. Yes, if you call wives and secret children, encroaching shell-shock and emerging drink problems complications, then yeah, Nixon was complicated.

'And you're such a simple man?' she asked.

'No, but I know when to keep things simple.'

That made her laugh. That was the patented David Webster brand of pretention. Genuine and well-meant but pretentious all the same. Luckily, he didn't mind when she laughed at him.

'One day some poor girl is going to fall for one of your lines.'

'But not you?'

They were outside the boarding house now and stopped by the door. The porch light which hung above them was casting very flattering shadows over David's face, sharpening his cheek bones, the straight line of his nose. He was a very handsome man, that was one of the very first things she had noticed about him and easy to be around, hadn't their conversation just proved that? He knew how to make things simple.

And then Grace did something reckless. She leaned up, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It only lasted the shortest breath of time, two slightly open pairs of lips pressed together. In fact, he was so surprised he didn't even have time to do anything with his hands, just left them hanging impotently by his sides.

Her eyes flew open as she realised what the hell it was she was doing and she leapt back as if she had been burnt. He leant forward for a second go but she evaded his grasp.

'Oh, David, I'm so sorry!' she gasped. She clapped her hands over her mouth as if that would stop her treacherous lips working independently of her brain again. 'I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean to do that.'

'It's okay,' he said. If anything he looked even more embarrassed than her. 'If I'm honest, I was kind of hoping I'd get a chance to kiss you again but now I can see the kind of reaction it would cause…'

'I didn't mean to lead you on. I like you, I really like you but I love Lewis and…'

'You love him?'

Why did she keep allowing these slips to burst out of her whenever she was talking about Nixon? She hadn't meant to say "love" and now David was looking at her all intense and questioning and he really was the last person on earth she wanted to discuss this with. 'Maybe. I don't know. It's a possibility. Thank you for walking me home.'

'No problem.'

He parted and Grace let herself into the boarding house heavy with guilt. But at least now she was no longer disappointed with Nixon, that had feeling had been replaced by a deep disappointment in herself.

Upstairs the nurses who weren't on shift were enjoying their down time, writing letters and flicking through magazines. Maggie was in the corner with an ancient sewing machine she had "liberated" mending the hem of a skirt. Everyone was too concerned with their own pursuits to look up and ask Grace why her face troubled. Good. The last thing wanted was even more people crawling all over her personal life.

She needed something to distract her from a crushing feeling of self-loathing and embarrassment. Well aware that she owed Lillian a letter explain everything that was going on with Nixon, she felt she wasn't in the right frame of mind for that and instead sat down to write a letter to her mother full of mindless trivia. But she had barely gotten past "Dear Mum and Dad" when Irene stumbled in, soaked from a sudden downpour of rain. She threw off her cape, shaking like a wet dog.

'Is anyone expecting a call from a Yank?' she asked the room.

'Description?' demanded Maggie, not looking up from her work.

'Reasonably tall, dark hair, blind drunk.'

Grace groaned. That sounded familiar. 'Mine.'

She got to her feet and headed downstairs.

Nixon was slumped against the wall in the foyer dripping a small puddle on the parquet flooring. Grace could see that Irene's summation was right; he was drunk. Not the most drunk she had seen him, he was upright at least, but enough to be embarrassing.

'Hi,' he said with a dopey, loose smile.

'Hi.' She was cautious. 'You were supposed to meet me at the hospital.'

'Was I? Sorry. Harry started up a card game. I guess I forgot.'

'No problem. What do you want?'

'You know in Bastogne, at Christmas you gave me that bottle of whisky?'

'Yeah,' she answered slowly.

'You don't have anymore, do you? You know, for medicinal purposes.'

She almost cried with disappointment but managed to cap it. 'At the risk of "sounding like your wife", I don't think you need anymore.'

'Look,' he said with a little more insistence and volume. 'If I can't have a drink today on what has probably been the shittiest day of my life, when can I?'

He took a deep calming breath. Shouting wasn't his style, he was famous for it in the Regiment, being one of the only officers who wouldn't raise his voice for anything. Such an uncharacteristic outburst was a symptom of a man rocking on the edge. Quietly, he added, 'So do you have some?'

'Yeah, I have some.'

Wondering if she was doing the right thing, wondering if she should have turned around and just yelled and sworn and chucked him out into the rain, she turned upstairs to her bedroom.

Nestled in her pack, cushioned by the red dress, was the bottle of Vat 69 he had thrust upon her on her birthday. There hadn't really been occasion to drink it since.

His face lit up when he saw her coming down with the bottle in her hand. 'And Vat 69 too. You really are an angel.'

He reached for it but she didn't let go. 'I don't want you to have it.'

'So, why are you giving it to me?'

'It's a choice.' She spoke slowly as a necessity. 'You can either have it or not have it. But I don't want you to have it.'

A frown creased his forehead. It was obviously a little too complicated for him in his current state. If she were honest, Grace herself wasn't entirely sure what she was saying.

'Does that mean I can have it?'

'Or not have it. It's up to you.'

'Okay. Then I'll have it.'

Admitting defeat, she relinquished her grip on the bottle. 'I'll walk you back. The state you're in you might get lost.'

'It's pouring with rain.'

'Then be a gentleman and offer me your jacket.'

However, the torrential rain had slacked off by the time they stepped out, abating to a light drizzle which caught in her hair and turned the air into a mist of fine droplets.

There was a small commotion up ahead – MPs swarming brainlessly around a shop front.

'What's going on up there?' she asked.

'I smashed a window.'

'What?!' She'd juddered to a halt briefly so had to jog a few steps to catch up with him. 'What on earth did you do that for?'

He shrugged. 'Hey, if Ron and every other GI in this place can go looting what can't I?'

'And you chose to loot a… what is it?'

'A drug store.'

'Did you find anything good?'

'No, it's a goddamn drug store.'

She couldn't help it, she laughed. The whole situation was absurdly funny and incredibly sad. Grace hugged his jacket tighter around herself. It felt more familiar to her than he did right now.

'Can I borrow a light?' he asked. 'My lighter's fucked.'

She reached into the front pocket of her uniform for the book of matches she always kept there, preferring the snap and hiss of a match to pushing a cheap Zippo. With a practiced movement, he shook a cigarette out of the box and into his mouth, cupping his hands around the flickering flame and leaning into it. When the cigarette finally caught and he'd taken the first drag, he leant forward and very slowly pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist.

It was the work of a few seconds but in those tiny movements it felt like years were stretching out. He made her feel like that; frustrated one minute, breathless the next, angry, scared, safe, loved, ignored, a child, a grown woman. David may offer her simplicity but there was something to be said for complicated. Life would never be boring with Nixon.

They made it back to the Battalion HQ hand in hand but Nixon was still in a foul mood, she could feel it rolling in off him in waves even though it was no longer directed at her.

The occupants of the room; Harry, Speirs and Lieutenant Lipton sitting around the table, looked up as they entered. Nixon in his slightly drunken state had opened the door with a little bit too much force and it swung back hard against the wall.

'We waited for you,' said Harry. 'Didn't know whether you were coming back or not.'

'I'm out,' grunted Nixon, shaking the rain from his wet hair. 'And going to bed. You coming?' he asked, turning to Grace.

She shook her head. She didn't feel like getting drunk and equally didn't feel like watching him drink himself into unconsciousness. 'I think I'm going to stay with these guys for a bit.'

He looked as if he were about to consider pressing the point but instead shrugged and with characteristic carelessness headed towards his room.

'Hey, what about your money?' called Harry after him but got no answer 'What's up with him?' His eyes following Nixon's path warily.

'What do you think?' Grace snapped. She looked around and took in the scene; a card game set for four players, a small pile of cash stacked in the place that had been Nixon's. She nodded to it. 'That his?'

The aggression in her tone obviously scared the boys and they seemed hesitant to answer as if it might be a trick question. Lieutenant Lipton was the man brave enough to answer. 'Um… Yes. Ma'am, yes it is.'

She sat down in the vacant place and counted the money, a mixture of American dollars, Pound notes and Liberation money, it was a fair amount. 'Okay, I'll play for him.'

The boys exchanged a nervous glance. More accurately, Harry and Lipton exchanged a nervous glance. Speirs had never been scared of anything in his life and just smiled.

'Uh… Grace?' Harry asked. 'Do you know what we're playing?'

'Nope.'

'It's poker,' Speirs supplied helpfully.

'Do you know how to play poker?' continued Harry.

'Not a clue.'

She lost a lot of money that night, mostly to Lipton who as the only one who wasn't a little bit tipsy was the best and shrewdest player – at least Grace assumed he was, she remained stubbornly ignorant of the rules. For the first few hands he kept insisting on returning the money he had won off her while she was equally insistent that he keep it. She had to punish Nixon in some way.

It was late, very late by the time they ended the game and Nixon was broke and she was exhausted. Rather than walking back to her own digs she stumbled into Nixon's room. The light stayed off and he didn't stir as she threw herself in the bed beside him fully clothed.

The sun blazing through the uncovered windows and on to her face was what woke Grace a few hours later and the first thing she saw was the bottle of whiskey sitting on the dresser in front of her. Frowning, she got up to examine it closer. It was full and unopened, the seal around the cap wasn't even broken. A spontaneous sigh of relief escaped her.

She strolled back to the bed feeling a million times lighter and pressed a kiss to Nixon's forehead as he slept. The action stirred him and he blinked up at her through bleary eyes. 'Morning.'

'Good morning.' She sat down beside him on the bed.

'I'm sorry.'

'Me too.'

He frowned. 'Why? What did you do?'

'All the money on the table last night, it now belongs to Lieutenant Lipton,' she tried to sound contrite but wasn't really getting there. 'I'm not very good at poker.'

He laughed. 'Well, if there's one thing I can afford to lose it's money.' He pulled her down for a kiss and whispered against her mouth. 'I'm really sorry.'

'I know.' It wasn't enough and she knew, deep down it would happen again but it had to be enough for now. 'I have to go. My Matron will pull a fit if she found out I spent the night here.'

'We're pulling out sometime today or tomorrow, can I come round and say goodbye?'

'Only if you're discrete.'

She pulled on her boots and made a quick stop at the mirror to twist her hair into some order with a handful of hair pins. He watched her movements closely from the bed.

'Very discrete,' he said. 'So, did I pass?'

'What?' He nodded towards the bottle on the dresser, which shone benignly in the sun, completely devoid of threat in the daylight after all the apologies.

'It wasn't a test.' She snatched up the bottle and left the room.

Grace walked back to her lodgings and straight up to her room, flinging herself on the bed. Maggie who was fixing her hair in the mirror glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

'Your bed hasn't been slept in.'

'Well, I haven't been sleeping in anyone else's. Actually I have but just sleeping. No fun was had.'

'I thought your night was going to be a bust when he showed up here four sheets to the wind.' She slipped on her shoes and headed for the door. 'I checked the rota; you're on at 12 but you don't have any time to sleep, you have to go and visit Mrs Schuster.'

'Who?'

'The old German woman. She wants to give you some strawberries.'

Grace groaned and fell backwards on the bed.

Reluctantly, she did her duty with the elderly Germans, breaking through the language barrier in order to accept their thanks and a cute wicker basket of strawberries.

In the last minutes before she needed to get to work, Grace took her basket down to the requisitioned post office where a young private was whistling to himself as he sorted through the unit's letters and parcels.

'Private Vest?'

The boy looked up from his work and did a double take when he saw her, a woman, standing in his domain. Flustered, he dropped the stack of envelopes he was holding and briefly dropped behind the counter to retrieve them before returning more flustered than ever.

'Yes, ma'am? I mean… What can I do for you, ma'am?'

'It's actually more a case of what I can do for you. I have a present for you.'

She pushed the basket across the counter towards him and his puzzled frown deepened.

'Ma'am, aren't you Captain Nixon's girl?'

Grace rolled her eyes; that was exactly what she wanted to be known as "his girl". 'There's no need to look so nervous, Private Vest, I'm not propositioning you.' He had the good grace to look a tiny bit disappointed. 'I've heard you're the man people come to when they want something found.'

'I am. Anything you want, I can get it for you.'

'I do fine on my own, thank you. Captain Nixon's going to come and see you at some point this morning, looking for a special brand of whiskey.'

Vest smiled knowingly. 'Vat 69. He's famous for it. You know, I think I could probably track some of that down if…'

'No, what I want you to do is never find another bottle again. Say whatever you like, make it seem like gold dust, just don't give him any.'

'You want me to lie?'

'You're an enlisted man, Private Vest, please don't act like you've never lied to an officer before. These,' she pushed the strawberries towards him. 'Are a sign of good will. And these.' The strawberries were augmented by several packets of cigarettes, a couple of them Lucky Strikes which were only given to officers. 'Do we have an agreement?'

He looked as though he was considering and Grace didn't know what more she could offer him as she had nothing more to give. Thankfully he nodded and took the gifts. 'Fine by me, ma'am.'

'Good. It was lovely to meet you.' She turned to the door but stopped. 'Oh, and it really goes without saying that this is something that we keep between us.'

Vest nodded fervently and Grace left quietly reassured. She could by no means deceive herself that disrupting the supply chain would solve Nixon's drinking problem, he had already showed himself to be developing a new sense of flexibility when it came to what he would drink, but it felt good to be doing something. She stubbornly refused to feel guilty about meddling.

**Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favourited. It means a lot to me to know people are enjoying this xxx**


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